


As Good as a Rest

by Quinara



Series: Turn and Face the Strain [2]
Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Community: seasonal_spuffy, F/M, season: b6
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-17
Updated: 2011-10-17
Packaged: 2017-10-24 17:32:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 31,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/266064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quinara/pseuds/Quinara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So, Buffy’s alive. Ish. Spike’s dead, but she’s hoping for the ish. Katrina’s definitely dead. At least the cops are investigating that one?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Don't Close Your Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Fall 2011 round of Seasonal Spuffy on DW. Many thanks to Evilawyer for her help on US-California finance thingemies, Lettered for reminding me how many words could be conceived in a short time period, plus extra massive thanks to dear Bogwitch, who was a brilliant and fantabulous beta, sounding board and whinging post, comboed all in one and without whom this fic would probably have been ditched halfway through. Or just suck. _And_ she made me the lovely, lovely banner!!
> 
> * * *
> 
>   
> 

She generally had good reason to panic about her birthday, but this was something else.

Jerking upright, Buffy woke bathed in sweat, her first lungful of air sucked in so hard it wouldn’t pass comfortably into her chest. She coughed, spluttering, shaking from her dream: the box, again, it was always the box – but that part had been different this time, afterwards…

 _No._ Desperately, Buffy concentrated on her surroundings, trying to CBT her way out of a crisis the way Willow’s support group told _her_ to every week. OK, she thought, breathing as the pre-dawn air whipped her skin, she was naked; she was not in a fugly funeral dress chosen to cover broken bones. No reason to panic there, even if it was pretty chillsome. And – she was in a crypt, but that was all right. It wasn’t her grave, it was Spike’s home, where he lived, where she slept sometimes. There was a distinction, definitely. No need to panic at all. Right?

To be honest, the crypt wasn’t very comforting as places to wake up went. The only thing in her eye line was a skull jutting out of the earthen wall, candle in one eye socket and cigarette butts overflowing from the other. Issues of clean-living aside, that was –

Although, maybe it _wasn’t_ a skull. It didn’t have to be a skull, did it?. Maybe it was only an unfortunately formed rock, with indentures?

Buffy rolled her eyes. Who was she trying to kid? It was a skull. She was twenty-one tomorrow, had almost been out of the grave as long as she’d spent in it, and she was waking up in crypts. With grimy old skeletons lodged in the wall and a slightly fresher corpse resting at her side.

And yep, he was still a corpse. Apparently managing to sleep through her Hammer Horror moment, Spike was perfectly still and definitely not breathing. Not even as she watched him, waiting for REM (vampires dreamed, didn’t they?) or some nerves to twitch or dust to irritate his nose. It was creepy when he did nothing, really creepy, just like it always was, but there he was. Dead.

Two weeks ago she would have run from the creepiness, the sight of his dead body on the bed and the feeling (eww; oh, why was she thinking it?) of his dead – stuff between her legs. These were the times that she felt like a necrophiliac, felt really disgusting, and it actually hit her more viscerally than remembering how many people he’d killed. But she was trying to work through that, if only because of the hypocrisy where it didn’t seem to bother her when she was jumping his dead old bones, nor when he was active and moving around and grinning at her.

Snuggling back under the sheets, however, Buffy realised that she was still on edge from the dream. Her new and revised way of reacting to this feeling was to poke Spike awake, bring him back to life. She was supposed to ask herself how she’d ended up rolled away from him, let him get so cold – it was still January, after all – but she wasn’t. Right here and now, her hands were staying to herself.

Attempting to make them move sent a hand out towards her purse, the wrong way, where it scrabbled for the five-dollar alarm clock she’d taken to bringing with her everywhere. That was a problem, but, oh, maybe she had hours; maybe she should go back to sleep…

No, she realised once she’d pulled the thing out of its handy compartment (probably meant for a cell phone, but funnily enough she didn’t have one of those), there were only twenty minutes left to go before she had to get up. She was due for the pretty heinous opening shift, where she stocked all the things she would have sworn she’d stocked at closing and then dealt with the breakfast crowd who didn’t want to get to work either. Still, maybe if she just shut her eyes, she’d get a few more minutes rest, and then at least she’d forget about –

It was at this moment, probably because she’d pulled the blanket from underneath him, that Spike happened to roll over to place his hand on her arm. This was not unusual, but her reaction was. He felt _freezing_ , and she couldn’t help it, she jerked herself away from him, shivering in reaction to how dead he felt, like a dead body falling on her, not a boyfriend-type-person waking up. “God –” she said, just in time to see the hurt look cross his face.

“What –” he replied shortly, before covering with a curl of his lip. “Well, good morning to you, too, pet.” Great. Morning defensiveness. “Sleep well?” The _bitch_ was implied.

“Apparently not so much.” She tried to keep calm, retain control, even though she was still clutching the sheets in her bone white fingers. It was really, really cold. “I, um… Yeah.”

For a moment, he stared at her, defensive glare folding into actual, real sympathy, but that hardened pretty quickly as it became clear she had nothing to give him. “Fine,” he said at length, slumping back against his pillow in a sulk. “Don’t tell me.”

It was about then that she realised something was really pretty wrong.

The thing was, it wasn’t like life had been all sunshine and roses between her and Spike over the last week. Sure, she’d accepted that maybe she was seeing him for real, but he was still bitter that she’d kept it a secret, and she was bitter that he was bitter; and you had to face up to the basic fact whatever that Spike and sunshine weren’t exactly compatible. But there had been something, moonlight and violets, maybe – a gentler side to the bruises and the you-get-off-on-asphyxiation-Spike? She had actually been trying, with words and things. Mostly puns. But right now she didn’t even have those.

And, like, the way he was looking at her now, too mercurial to stay sulking so furrowing his bad-dye-job eyebrows instead, worrying about her silence, naked to the waist with the sheet not exactly decent – that was all normal. They talked post-coitus now, they really did – sometimes pre- as well. Sometimes they talked even in the absence of all immediate opportunities for anything, so the worry was expectable. She was a little worried too.

Eventually words came out of her mouth, but they weren’t what she really wanted to say. “I think I might get to my shift a little early,” she found herself apologising, awkwardness solidifying into flight instincts. Her eyes had dropped from Spike’s already; her leg was leaving the bed for the cold crypt air. An excuse she hadn’t even thought about fell onto her tongue. “Those vamps might try and eat their way in again, you know?”

He wasn’t moving, still corpse-like in the corner of her eye (enough to make her shiver), but he watched as she got dressed, confused, calculating and too damn perceptive. Even if his words were banal: “Shame undeath can’t make a bloke kick the Medley habit, innit?”

“Yeah,” she agreed, pulling up her jeans, trying to mock their usual conversation. It wasn’t really happening. “Good thing you only died with the urge to smoke, drink and gamble, huh?”

OK, no way had she meant to say that and make it sound so bitchy. When she looked up, a little shocked at herself, deodorant in one hand and t-shirt in the other, Spike was frowning even harder than before, sitting up with one arm tossed casually behind his head. “Is that what you think?” he asked at this point, slow and snake-like. More deadly than dead.

“I…” she began, not trusting herself to talk. This was all going wrong, and strange, but, honestly, when you thought about it, what stones did he have to throw at other vampires? How could she think that –

No. She refused to think. Angrily, she threw down her deodorant and pulled the tee over her head, grabbing her DMP shirt from the floor to finish off her outfit, covering it up with her coat. Her mind was _not_ allowed to screw this up now, not when she’d actually started getting things good, not when she’d actually started feeling properly alive.

“Buffy…?” His voice came gently, for him.

And yet, all the same, she snapped as she left, “It’s too early for me to think anything. We can talk later.”

With that, she basically fled. Again.

* * *

So, back in the real world, this was how her finances stood:

By California law, Joyce Summers had left LA with thirty percent of the proceeds from a four-bedroom house on the Westside. In Sunnydale, that had translated to a forty-five percent down payment on 1630 Revello, while the divorce settlement had Hank covering a third of the monthly mortgage payments (no one was quite sure whether this would have been less before Dawn, or whether this was actually just for Buffy, with changing their father's finances far too complicated for the monks). This meant that when Willow and Tara had chosen to cover half of the payments, life insurance covering the other half, they had actually only been paying for a third of the house (but no one had told Willow this yet; it possibly wasn’t polite and made more sense this way anyway, now that she was living there on her own).

Unfortunately, with insurance premiums that much higher in Sunnydale and the Summers' name rather tarnished by frequent claims, increasing her equity in 1630 had never been very feasible for Joyce, and the extensive structural repairs that had been required in late '99 had actually pushed her to refinancing. This had not looked good to the bank, especially after the monthly payments had become interest only _again_ by late 2000.

However, there was still money in the house. And, despite certain financiers' pessimistic opinion, property values in Sunnydale were actually rising steadily, if slowly, especially on Revello Drive and in the immediate surrounding neighbourhood. In normal circumstances, selling Revello would have given Buffy more than enough for a down payment on somewhere new. The only problem was credit, which didn’t tend to come knocking at the doors of people who’d only got their name so far as an ATM card and currently earned less money in a day than the bank manager thought was reasonable to spend on an evening's take-out.

All in all, there was no way they were moving. “But,” Dawn finished, pulling some papers free from a sheaf of hopefully finished homework, pushing them Buffy’s way, “there’s also something going on with the gallery, ‘cause Mom bought into a bit of it when we moved here, only I think she was in the middle of selling it when she…” She trailed off, and they both stared at each other for a moment before Dawn got going again, shook herself and continued, looking down, “And – do you remember that Brian guy? It turns out she was just messing with us when she said they’d never met before, because I _think_ he’s the guy who owns…” Again, Dawn swallowed. “Anyway, there’s money tied up there as well, but we’re not really sure what’s going on.”

If nothing was certain except death and taxes, Buffy was pretty sure she had no hope left at all. After another abyss of a day at the DMP – that was if you could even call something a day when you didn’t see sunlight and every hour felt the same, but she was going with it for the moment – she was here in the Magic Box, getting temporal whiplash every time a customer walked in and she realised it wasn’t even five-thirty yet and Anya hadn’t shut. Dawn and Anya were talking to her about money, but it was going in about as well as it had the first time round. Although the spreadsheets were shaded in rainbows this time.

On the other side of the table, the two of them looked at her like they really expected Buffy would say something. The bright blue walls loomed behind them, but Buffy was still thinking about Spike. And whether she’d been too rude to that guy who’d brought out the sleaze around lunchtime. And whether it was three days food they had in the house, or if they could maybe eke it out to four.

Nevertheless, she salvoed eventually, trying to engage. “So…” She could deal with numbers, couldn’t she? Maybe it would be easier if she imagined them all as demons and figured out how she’d stop the apocalypse. She could give Brian a broadsword – she’d always liked him. “So what you’re saying is –” It wasn’t the apocalypse, though, was it? Buffy thought as she leafed through her papers. It was all too mundane for that. “– we can’t move house.” Not to mention that they’d already lost.

Anya bit her lip. “No,” she confirmed, apologetically at least, even if her eyes did drift over Buffy’s shoulder to the customer walking in. Buffy looked back self-consciously, eyeing the woman and her suit blazer jacket. She was heading over to the blessed candle display, and Buffy bet she was she was so going to eavesdrop. “I’m sorry,” Anya continued, drawing back Buffy’s attention. “But – and I’m not the financial advisor you really need here, Buffy, so you might want a second opinion – but I don’t think things have to actually be that bad for you, especially if moving house is the goal you have in mind. There’s money caught up in the gallery, for sure, and Dawn’s college fund…” This seemed to distract Anya, just for a moment as her voice went quiet, conspiratorial almost, even though Dawn herself was sat right next to her and rolling her eyes. “It’s probably the healthiest account you have, when it comes down to it. But I’m not sure you can get at the money without Mr. Summers to co-sign, not until Dawn’s eighteen, and even then I think it's covered by...”

“Dawn's college fund is for Dawn's college,” Buffy interrupted, certain about that at least. “That's not even a last resort. It's another dimension of resorts.” Dawn seemed pretty embarrassed by her saying this, but Buffy hoped she shut that down with a glare. It wasn’t happening.

“OK, fine,” Anya agreed, bouncing back with a shrug. “No problem. Education is important.” She nodded, confirming the point, before breaking into, “And, actually, that’s what I'm trying to say. There's no easy way of putting this, Buffy,” she continued, not really making it sound difficult, “but your dead end job is only ever gonna take you to a dead end, unless you get promoted pretty soon. You can’t afford 1630, basically, but if you ditch the mortgage, you aren’t gonna get another one, and renting might work out, but it’s really seriously possible you could get through your money too fast for it to make a difference, and then you’d be left somewhere even worse than before. Add in that we don’t even know how much the gallery sale involves, nor the legal costs, whether this Brian guy’s gonna play by the book…”

“Um,” Dawn interrupted, probably catching sight of Buffy’s steadily widening eyes, “we’re going with the glass is half full, remember?”

“Oh yes,” Anya remembered, continuing, “anyway. Your employment. As an idea, it’s a good one: employment is the backbone of our great capitalist society and more likely to ensure personal happiness than child-rearing, according to a poll in _Cosmopolitan_ magazine. Good job – no pun intended. But.” She paused, clearly for emphasis. Slightly too long. “If there’s one thing I have learned from Xander’s many experiences of unskilled labour, thankfully now in the past, it’s that education is important too. You don’t want to end up in a life of minimum wage serfdom, especially not when you have Dawn to be responsible for, plus the high risk of permanent injury that follows slaying like a paragraph of fine print.” She rounded off, “So, if you want my advice, _that’s_ where you should be focusing your attention and spending your money.”

In the immediate wake of Anya’s speech, Buffy wasn’t quite sure what to say. She had a feeling Anya had misread the _Cosmo_ article, but otherwise she made it all sound really obvious and, well, simple. The thing was, Buffy was certain reality wouldn’t be like that. Even if there was some money in the gallery deal that they could get hold of eventually, enough to put her through graduation even, what guarantee was there gonna be of a job at the end of it? There were people at the Palace who’d _gone_ to UC Sunnydale, who’d majored in sellable things like Bio and Comp. Lit, so what hope was there for Buffy, with her record the way it was? And would there even be enough money to get Dawn through high school after that? It wasn’t like that was cheap.

Honestly, if there was anything at all left in her own college fund, after the hospitals and funeral directors had had their share, Buffy had been half-thinking for a while that she should get it transferred into Dawn’s – and now she was thinking the same with this gallery stuff. Dawn was going to get offers that blew Northwestern out of the water, and Buffy’s job, one of many, was to be there when she got them to tell her she could go. No way would Mom have expected anything less.

And Buffy didn’t really see herself going back to school, anyway. That was pretty much the important point. They all remembered the great time-swirling incident – and it wasn’t like she’d been keeping up with Willow and Tara when they’d gone normal speed. Really, when it came down to it, she couldn’t see herself doing anything other than wearing the cow hat for the next few years, but she didn’t quite know how to express that without sounding defeatist.

“It’s not that I don’t appreciate what you’re saying,” she started eventually, attempting a smile in Anya’s encouraging direction, “or what you’ve done or anything, but I – I don’t think I can go back to school, right now. Besides, I figure registration’s pretty much…”

“Actually –” Anya took a breath, sitting up straighter in a way that implied she had solutions.

Buffy spoke over her, not wanting the complication. “Besides, you know Warren and his guys are getting planning with _something_. They’ve been quiet for weeks; I don’t think ‘send Buffy invisible’ was their final master scheme.” She didn’t really like it when the bad guys went quiet; it usually meant that she’d missed something, and as much as the reprieve had been nice, it was getting to the stage where something big was probably coming.

“Maybe you scared them away?” Anya suggested, shrugging, her eyes drifting back to her customer as she lowered her voice. (By her side, Dawn was picking at her cuticles.) “Maybe that was actually their plan, to turn you into pudding.” She looked at Buffy again, reassuring smile back on her face. “You’ll get them in the end, I’m sure.”

Buffy sighed. Really, though, wasn’t that the problem? “But that’s the thing,” she said. “I can’t even do anything if I did ‘get them’.” More than turning into pudding, more than having to rely on Spike’s surprisingly spotty recall of her proportions, that was what the invisibility escapade had drummed home. They saw nemesis; she saw pains in the ass, whom she couldn’t kill, couldn’t really do anything about and who she had to hope would get bored before they did any real damage. It gave her a headache when she thought about it too long, but – “They’re human.”

“Oh,” Anya replied, shifting uncomfortably on the bench. “Well, I’ve seen their type before.” She was still trying, it seemed. “Maybe they’re all about the big ideas right now, but I doubt they’ve got any real vision for power. If they killed you and took over Sunnydale, I doubt they’d even know what to do – they’d be dethroned in a week.”

Seriously, Buffy tried to humour the ex-demon as much as she could, but, boy, could it be hard. “That’s great, Anya,” she said. “It’s just – the killing me part is kind of more what I’m worried about?”

Rebuffed, Anya sat back, looking up as if to tot through the pros and cons in her head. Before she could say something essentially crushing, however, Dawn cut in, “And that’s really good.” She sounded hopeful. A little patronising. “You should worry about that.”

When Buffy looked her way, it was obvious the sentiment was well meant, but, still, you had to wonder whether bluntness was catching. “Thanks,” Buffy said, eyebrow raised and feeling slightly affronted. “It’s always nice to know you care.”

“I just _meant_ ,” Dawn continued, blushing as she rolled her eyes, “with the geeks and stuff, it’s nice that you’re thinking ahead. To the _future_. Where you’re gonna be. I knew you’d been thinking about it a little, but…”

The implication was about Spike at that point and it came over loud and clear, making Buffy dart her eyes away to the vinyl floor, then glance to see if blazer-woman was still listening. Was it true? Maybe it was fair to say that Buffy _had_ started thinking about Spike in the way that people got thought about, but did that make him part of the picture? Did that mean she was thinking about the picture? Was she meant to be using him as proof?

“Wait, what’s Buffy been thinking about?” Anya asked, not vanishing even though Buffy wasn’t looking at her. She sounded curious, which, actually, wasn’t good... “Is it something good?”

“Oh, you know,” Dawn continued to talk, “she’s been spending way loads of time Spike…”

_Oh, god, no._

Now Buffy was looking up again, glaring as her heart raced. _How dare you?_ almost came out of her mouth as she stared her sister down, because that had been the unspoken pact: Spike would come round more and Buffy would have fewer secrets; Dawn wouldn’t tell a soul until Buffy was comfortable. That was… It was unwritten _law_.

But apparently Dawn didn’t remember, or maybe didn’t care. For a moment she started to wince, like she hadn’t meant to say it at all, but then she tossed her hair, eyes clear and insouciant with rebellion. _What? I’m not allowed to make an observation?_

Beaten in this particular glaring throw-down, Buffy darted her eyes to Anya’s, trying to work out how much she was putting together, because Dawn wasn’t gonna take it back. There was some sort of recognition on Anya’s face and it seemed pretty accurate, that was the awful thing –

– but it was saved, suddenly and completely, as the candle woman made a move towards the cash register. “Excuse me,” Anya said, attention averted as she almost leapt from the table, leaving Buffy far freer to argue with her sister.

Freedom brought the floodgates loose. “What the hell was that, Dawn?” she demanded as soon as she was able, leaning forward onto the clouded glass and hissing. Maybe she was overreacting, maybe she had a few Spike-related issues left over from the morning, but she was still ticked. “What are you trying to pull?”

With another toss of her hair (and, dammit, side-note, Buffy really missed having hair to toss), Dawn leant forward to meet her. Thankfully she kept her voice at the same quiet volume. “I’m not trying to pull anything!” she hissed. “What are _you_ doing, Buffy, keeping your secrets so secret you freak out because of what Anya probably thought was a joke?”

“It’s called _privacy_ , OK?” she spat back, not sure why she suddenly felt so threatened, but certain that she felt it. It was making her hands shake. “I didn’t think I needed to explain…”

“Are you ashamed of him?” was all Dawn shot back, accusing and unwilling to compromise. “Is that it?” God, it had only been a week, but Dawn had become more insufferable on this topic than Spike; Buffy tended to forget, because there wasn’t usually much chance for it to come up, but, yeah, she was persistent.

“Of course I’m not,” Buffy began, starting out strong but ending up unsure where to go. “I…” She wanted to look away, but she knew if she did that then Dawn would assume the worst. “He’s Spike, Dawn,” she tried to explain, speaking even more softly. “He’s a vampire; he’s – dead, you know?” Didn’t she understand that? Because, actually, it was quite simple. “What’s everyone gonna think?” They probably all saw him for the corpse he was. “What do I even _say_?”

“You dated Angel OK,” Dawn replied sullenly, pushing back. “ _He_ was dead.”

“Yeah,” Buffy said, simply, getting to the point that was more important than the Scoobies, “But I hadn’t been. Not really.”

That was it, wasn’t it? It felt like that might be it, or at least it had this morning. Sure, her heart had stopped when she’d drowned, but she knew now that that had been basically like falling asleep. There was nothing like it, after all, no way to convey how it had felt to wake up in a coffin, to regain consciousness before her toes and fingers and eyes had fully fixed themselves, to feel, for just that split second, the way the rot had clung to her, muscles dissolving into it down her limbs. The memory of heaven had been fading for months, but she still remembered that feeling of undeath, the feeling of being wrenched back to this unnatural state, and – wasn’t that what Spike was? Only seconds away from collapsing into dust? How could she sleep with him and really come back to life?

Dawn was still staring, apparently not getting any of this as shudder-worthy. “Your logic is so senseless,” she said, reclaiming their normal talking volume. “But whatever, you know he’s coming over, right? You’re gonna have to socialise in front of people.”

“Huh?” Buffy asked, slightly surprised by that; she hadn’t arranged anything, she was pretty sure. “Tonight?”

“You said if I cooked I could invite who I wanted,” Dawn continued. She looked almost entirely merciless. “So I invited him.” She smirked. “Guess that means you won’t have a chance to wallow in your issues.”

“And when did you arrange this?” Buffy asked, slightly nervous. Although, if she thought about it, she was curious as well, if only because she was usually pretty knowledgeable about Spike’s whereabouts. She couldn’t think how Spike would have seen Dawn after the cooking conversation, but before now. They’d only talked food, what, yesterday morning?

Going by the look on her face, the concept was much less strange to Dawn. She tapped a pen on the table, irritated and sarcastic. “He came round last night when you were at work?” Oh, right; now it seemed obvious. Funny – Buffy tended to forget that the rest of the world didn’t actually come to a halt when time stood still at the Palace. It was in a dimension all on its own. “We watched TV,” her sister carried on, apparently calling amnesty on their argument for the moment. “Oh,” she seemed to remember suddenly, blushing. The pen went limp in her hand. “And somebody called for you.”

Deflating, Buffy sighed. Yeah, the argument probably would have to be put on hold for some other life stuff. That stuff was never over. It was like unkillable geeks. “Who was it?” she asked, resigning. ‘Somebody’ meant that it wasn’t gonna be a good call; good news, if there was any, always came from someone with a name.

Dawn looked embarrassed, though, which almost certainly meant she’d failed to maintain their mom’s old standards for telephone answering. “She, uh, didn’t say… But I figured you weren’t gonna be home until tonight anyway, and she said she’d call back.”

“It wasn’t social services, was it?” After her raid on the offices, which she was totally ashamed about, Buffy had kind of been hoping that they would get off her back. Not that she’d really expected the whole system to climb down from her spine and leave its friends behind, but the hope had been nice. Maybe some of the anarchy as well. (She was never telling Spike about that escapade, not ever.) “Did she sound like a Kroeger clone?”

Dawn was thinking about it, chewing her lip, glancing at Anya – who’d apparently been so distracted by her sale that she was now re-arranging her successful candle display to more prominently show off its range. At last the decision was made. “I don’t think so,” Dawn said. “She didn’t sound like she cared, or like she was trying to. She was more no-nonsense, kinda.”

“Right,” Buffy replied, straightening her clothes in a way that felt weirdly Pavlovian. “Well, that’s helpful.” She had a feeling like now was the time to panic.

* * *

When they came home, Buffy tried not to think about the dream. It had been bothering her all day, sitting there in the back of her brain, but there had been so many people around that it hadn’t had the chance to really distract her. Now, at home, there were no Doubemeat customers, no finance papers, no women shopping for candles, so she was slightly worried the angst was coming. She also tried not to think about the fact that Spike was coming over fairly soon, if only because that would almost certainly set off more thinking about the dream, but it really didn’t go very well.

To be fair, she wasn’t exactly helped by the others. First of all, Dawn abandoned her for the kitchen, banning her quite explicitly from entering. This was possibly because something like a cake was in progress for tomorrow, as well as tonight’s dinner, which was, yeah, sweet and everything, but not very useful in occupying her time. Willow, though not closeted away anywhere, was staring the vacant stare of paper-writing into her laptop screen, headphones on her head and notebooks making modern art with water bottles. She managed to give Buffy an absent wave, but it didn’t look like there was going to be much else.

And so Buffy made the really exciting choice to go upstairs and take a shower. It went fairly well, but afterwards she found herself pulled irresistibly into a quagmire of indecision. She was standing in front of her mirror, unable to decide between an outfit that said ‘vampire, take me now (friends, there is nothing going on)’ and ‘vampire, we need to talk issues (friends, there’s _really_ nothing going on)’. It was an important choice. Or, well, sort of. It was distracting, at least. To be honest, both outfits were the same shirt and pants – but the latter had a camisole to thwart sheerness, and that made all the difference.

The decision was made for her when a familiar shiver ran up her undressed back. It was kind of a habit of theirs that she would go out to meet Spike rather than him coming straight in (they’d formed a lot of habits for a single week; she had no idea whether this was good or bad), and usually they used it for secret gropes, but sometimes it was just to say hi. The problem was that you could see him out of the living room window, usually, so there was only a limited time when you got to be covert. Also, Spike tended towards impatience bordering on a categorical incapacity to wait five minutes, so you couldn’t trust him to follow the rules of the habit – which was possibly more just something she liked to do? Anyway, celerity was the big-money word.

In the interests of speed, therefore, Buffy threw the sheer top over her bra and snuck-or-possibly-flew back downstairs to open the door before there was knocking, while Willow remained engrossed at the other end of the dining table.

“Hi,” she said airily, coming out onto the porch. Of course Spike was there, thankfully looking much more alive than that morning, even if the pallor mortis hadn’t suddenly gone tan.

He wasn’t surprised to see her, but he _was_ distracted momentarily by her boobs, so at least that proved she was still proficient in the language of clothes. “Hel _lo_ ,” he said as he looked up, smirk definitely in place. She was caught in the twinkle of his eyes, just for a moment, but then he seemed to remember how he’d intended to greet her: he sighed, face settling immediately something more business-like. Twinkling faded generally. “Look, about this morning,” he said. “I know it’s a pipe dream, but all day I’ve been…”

“I’m sorry,” she cut him off, pretty absolutely. She was, though, and his surprise at her saying it suddenly made the feeling sharper. “I didn’t mean…” And yet, now she was sighing too, uncertain what to say, uncertain exactly _what_ she didn’t mean.

Looking past Spike, Buffy stared into her front garden, trying to marshal her thoughts. The sun had set, which made the world look the way she most remembered it, her overgrowing lawn like a tangle of shadows and the light just above their heads not enough to let on what was lurking in every corner of the porch. The insects and the rot, you could imagine them anywhere, but you wouldn’t quite be able to see.

“I didn’t mean to wake up so bitchy,” was the explanation she decided on for Spike, in the end. Who knew how he’d take it. “It just – happened.”

Carefully he scrutinised her, tipping his head like she was a work of art. His hands were still in his pockets, but she could almost see them twitching, waiting until they could touch her again, bring their own shadows across her face. She wanted him to touch her, she was sure of it. Wasn’t she?

Shaking himself free of whatever he was feeling, Spike jerked his chin towards the door and changed the subject, placing them back firmly on familiar ground. “What’s going on in there?”

Relieved and relaxing, she replied with a shrug. “Not much,” she said. “Wills is working; Dawn’s the head chef. I’m so sous she won’t even let me in the kitchen.”

That made him snort, and it was almost like they were normal again. “Bossy little chit, your sister,” he said, still amused. “It’s a mystery who she takes after.”

Unable to resist, she shoved him on the shoulder. Lightly, definitely lightly, but a shove all the same. “Hey!” How did he get her smiling? _That_ was the mystery. He was meant to be making her feel weird. “I’m not bossy. I’m just right.”

“Of course you are,” he patronised, rubbing the leather she’d probably bruised. It hadn’t felt that bad, touching him this time. Obviously, she’d only touched his coat and the heel of her hand had been grazing at best, but maybe she was imagining things, with the dream? Maybe it would all just wash away from her? “You have ‘right’ down to perfection,” he continued, pulling up another bubble of a smile. “Or is that righteousness?”

“Oh, you are so gonna get it…” It was a perfectly normal reaction, one she didn’t even think about, to take him by both arms and spin him back against the wall, just to the right of the doorjamb so his head rounded an inch away from the porch light. It threw every angle of his face into relief, and that was just the way she liked him, the blue fire in his eyes, the burning yellow of his hair…

It was only when she leaned up to kiss him that her eyes caught on the bones of his skull, jutting just as fiercely in the bright orange light. His jaw, his cheeks, his eye sockets, the sight of them curdled something in her gut and as their lips touched the electricity that ran through her was not the good kind. It was icy, jarring deep into her bone marrow, his lips like cold rubber against hers, not alive, not anything.

Disgusted and frightened by feeling it, Buffy leapt away from him, shuddering violently and swiping her fingers over her lips. Spike looked like she’d just staked him, like she could never have done anything worse, but there was no time to explain, no words she managed to come up with, before –

“HEY, YOU TWO,” Dawn’s yell came through the door, just as she swung it open, looking a little disappointed just to find them standing there. “Dinner’s ready.”

“Coming, niblet,” Spike said immediately, not looking at Buffy as he walked past and headed inside. Was his voice rough? It sounded rough, which made her feel terrible. His turned shoulder was definitely cold. She could do nothing but follow.

Inside, the dining table had been set and Willow was neatening her area, pulling all her books closer to her laptop; she smiled their way. A stubby, solitary candle was lit as a centrepiece, dripping wax onto the Trix novelty cereal bowl it was standing in, flanked by a steaming casserole dish and a salad. It actually looked like dinner, and for a moment the ache in Buffy’s chest was only in gratitude that someone else was clearly trying so very hard as she was. She actually hadn’t had to think about this meal at all.

“This looks amazing, Dawn,” she said, honestly.

“It’s my new recipe,” came the cheerful response. Buffy wanted more than anything to catch Spike’s eye at this point, but he was still hurt, looking away from her. She glanced at Willow instead, but she’d been distracted by an errant post-it note, was chewing her lip as she read it; there was only Dawn, almost too radiant as she sat down. “I call it _quesaroni_ : like mac’n’cheese – which I made from scratch, by the way – but with extra jalapeños. And anchovies, though I guess those aren’t Mexican.”

“Anchovies?” Willow finally spoke, looking nervous as she took her seat, post-it forgotten. It was a bit like how Buffy was suddenly feeling. “Are you sure…”

Spike had apparently seen how Dawn’s face was falling, because he cut Willow off. “Sounds excellent. A right proper expedition through the culinary jungle.” The warning didn’t come without a glare sent Willow’s way, over Dawn’s head as she reached for the serving spoon.

That made Willow look at Buffy, of course, since she was supposed to outrank Spike, probably. But she shook her head, which actually meant that Spike graced her with a smile for a moment. The good ship Buffy’s Mood almost rocked back to an even keel.

What that didn’t mean, however, was that she had anything to say when they were all sat down, food on their plates. Silence hung.

“You can start at any time, guys,” Dawn joked, nervously.

Summoning her courage, Buffy let her guilt push her towards actually eating, the acceptance of cheesy green lumps and black specks onto her fork and into her mouth. It went in, just about.

OK, so, it wasn’t too bad, actually. The macaroni was pretty much cooked, and there wasn’t any taste of fish apart from a slight saltiness, and that was probably a good, because Buffy had a feeling they were out of salt. The overwhelming taste, however, was the jalapeño. Definitely the jalapeño. Crap, there was more – hot, hot, _hot_.

 

_Her mouth was burning through him, one kiss at a time. There was nothing to be done for it, since he was dead after all, but every kiss still felt like murder._

_“Yeah,” he was moaning underneath her, “you know how to do it.” His cock was marble-cold against her cheek, her face red hot and burning at his hip, and he felt so excited, even as his flesh dissolved into liquid underneath her, as her fingertips burnt through his thigh to the femur. “ God, Buffy, you know it.”_

_“But I don’t know how,” she told him, mouth on autopilot melting a path up his desiccating penis, which flaked like cold tinder across her tongue, causing her to gag, shudder, burn up even more with the heat she was producing._

_“Yeah you do,” he said, calm and unnerved, like he knew what has happening and expected it all to go this way. She raised her head to look at his face, the eyes knocking around in his skull but looking so earnestly at her. It was like he understood everything she was, everything she could be, everything she’d been. He knew it had to go this way. “We’re both dead here,” he finally said._

_And then she felt it: the burn of life inside her flared so hot that her heart stopped beating. It killed him first, of course, incinerating him into cold flame that ran across every inch of her skin – but then it killed her, explosion rushing through her chest, all the flesh he’d helped her realise was cold._

 

It was like déjà vu, the dream coming back to her, only when she snapped out of it she realised she was standing up at their dining table, fork clattering on her plate, cold sweat running out across her skin, all of her. Dawn, Willow and Spike were all staring.

“Uh…” she began, uncertain what to say. Dawn looked like she was preparing for rejection; Spike’s eyes were narrowing, suspicious. “I was just thinking we need water. Anyone else want water? Water?”

She looked around, but got nothing. Willow had her latest bottle by her side anyway.

“There’s soda,” Dawn said, the words brittle. Her fork was in her hand like a weapon, like she was ready to defend herself against Buffy’s _actual_ criticism. Of course, Buffy had completely forgotten the taste of the food in place of the imagined taste of Spike’s dissolving man-thing, but she was _not_ going to be sharing that any time soon.

“Um, yeah, right,” she managed, almost sitting down but deciding instead on picking up her glass, going with the cover story. “The thing is, I think I’ve developed sodaphobia. The machine at work…” No one was buying it, and now she was panicking, eyes drifting unavoidably to the kitchen where there would be water, aloneness, a place to break a little and pull herself back together. Be normal again so everyone could see that she was, normally. “I’m just gonna go.”

She let her legs carry her away, hating the burn in her cheeks and throwing herself towards the kitchen, even as Dawn started murmuring to Spike.

It only took a couple of seconds to fill her glass from the tap, but it took much longer to drink. The cold water was almost too much against her throat, too different from how hot she was, and she needed to breathe, almost continuously around gulps, not timing anything right. Shaking, she stood there, leaning on the counter and waiting until she calmed down, staring at the ghost-like image of her face in the window glass.

It wasn’t that bad, she tried to tell herself; it was only a dream. No matter how prophetic and truthful Dream Spike’s words had seemed, it was hardly out of character for Spike to randomly expound on things he knew nothing about, in dreams _or_ in reality. And clearly nothing like what had happened was _really_ going to happen, because she would have realised she had the ability to burn through vamps with her touch way before now, even (if not especially) if it only happened in bed because of the hormones or whatever. And if that part had been surreal, enough that it wasn’t even real, why did the conversation have to be accurate?

As the pounding in her ears subsided, Buffy could hear the others talking, and that wasn’t a conversation she could ignore. Even if she couldn’t quite make it all out, there were far too many mentions of her name, and too much scorn.

 _“…up with her?”_ she thought she heard Dawn say.

And Willow was saying back, _”I thought she was better now.”_

She didn’t mean any harm by it, Buffy was sure about that. But Willow had always had the talent to get right to the heart of a problem, right away – and then poke at it whether that was welcome or not.

Wasn’t she better now? In terms of measurable criteria, Buffy had actually thought she was doing OK: in a twenty-four hour period, she might have a bad dream, but then there would probably only be one. She hadn’t cried at work at all over the last week, and she’d bought food for the house, cleaned the bathroom. How was that not better?

But then, she thought, fingers clutching the warming weight of her glass as she placed it in the sink, there was this. Stuff with Spike had been pretty good, all told, and she could fit him in way better when she didn’t have to include the time it took to run across town - and she had her alarm clock now, helping her stay in control. Never knock the clock. But her attempts at incorporating Spike into the Scoobies weren’t really working, and he was only ever around for awkward half-hours, and now it was like the awkwardness there was seeping into some sort of weird psychosexual freak-out. Which was just what she didn’t need.

The only explanation or trigger, maybe, that she could think of – for the dream, since it was pretty obvious what the dream was doing – was the dead girl they’d found on patrol. But that had been a week ago, at the same time that everything had gone better, so unless it had been brewing in some really unhealthy-type way, she had no idea how to explain it.

Sometimes she did wonder, though – if she was really being honest with herself – whether they wouldn’t have been able to save her if they hadn’t been LA. The time demons, they’d screwed things around, and the girl had obviously been dead since at least the night before they’d found her, but if they’d been patrolling the night she’d died? Maybe they’d have got to her in time.

It was stupid, wasn’t it, to think that? She’d been in such a good place when they’d gone out; everything had seemed really clear, but what had she been doing shirking, really? What had she been doing?

Her life was never going to get back on track, not when she mismanaged time so badly.

She was staring the glass in the sink, Buffy realised now, staring hard so her eyes couldn’t form tears. Concentric circles filled her vision, the rim of the glass leading to the base, the silver steel underneath and she couldn't see herself, only a vague sense of light reflected, behind the glass. Why did it have to be so hard? she wondered, gripping with her fingertips, watching the pressure bleach her skin in white ovals. She was only one person. It wasn’t supposed to take up time to live her life. She and Spike had been away for barely _any_ time, and yet, and yet –

Quite suddenly, but unsurprisingly in retrospect, the glass cracked. Shards fissured over her knuckles, the highball's height slumping over the back of her palm, cutting painlessly. Surprise drew the smallest cry up and out of her throat.

That surprise, however, kept her staring as the thin cut's pain started to burn. An edge-line of red formed between her thumb and index finger. She wasn’t sure how to move, so didn’t, just stood there, breathing.

It was moments before the tell-tale sound of boots treaded into the kitchen.

Initially he paused, standing probably a few feet behind her, almost certainly catching scent of the blood. He was still hurt from before, he had to be, so he was probably watching and waiting for her, trying to figure out what had happened. Buffy didn’t know what to say, but she was sure they were both listening to the sound of her blood, dripping and rapping like rain.

In the end, Spike cracked first. “For fuck’s sake – here,” he said, dashing over the last few footsteps, freezing for a moment as his touch made her jump, but then carrying on: one arm arced over hers to pluck away the larger pieces of glass, to turn the tap on low and, with every move business-like, to sluice the smaller fragments gently from her skin. The glassy water flushed down the drain, probably to cause her problems somewhere down the line, but for the moment just away.

She wanted to turn her head, see his face, but she couldn’t quite trust herself to do it. Instead Buffy let him get on with everything, use the last piece of kitchen towel to dry her off then spin some surgical tape around a dressing on her hand. It wasn’t bleeding anymore, even with the water, but Spike was a finisher, so he finished, grumbling under his breath the whole time. She kept her mouth shut.

Eventually he was done, smoothing his thumb over her right hand – where it was actually comforting, the wholesome barrier of First Aid between them.

“Now,” Spike said bluntly, stilling his movement, done with the distraction and calmed by it. Bully for him. “This is the part where you tell me what the bloody hell is going on.”

Raising her eyes, Buffy tried to think of an answer, but, honestly, she wasn’t sure she had one to give. As usual, her head was a mess and, as usual, he wasn’t helping, being nice when her insides had decided he just enabled her deadness.

“What’s happened to you today?” he asked, looking at her, a little desperate by the sound of it. “You’ve gone… I don’t even know what or where or how you’ve gone, but it’s somewhere.”

She sighed, trying to pull any sort of strength she still had back inside her. That morning she’d said they could talk about now, she supposed, but she didn’t quite know what she’d been thinking. Earlier was better, definitely; now her feet were aching and her mind had switched off. Any other day she’d be attempting to get straight to the physical comfort part of the evening, but now she was not only mildly repulsed by the idea, when it came down to it, but she also had to explain the whole thing. To Spike. Who thought sex was the sixth sense.

Taking a breath, Buffy risked the risk, shut her eyes and tipped forward, dropping her head to his shoulder and the musky-yum smell of tobacco-leather. It was almost ridiculous enough to make her laugh, how warm his clothes smelled compared to how cold he felt, and that was before the irony that her forehead was apparently entirely fine making contact with dead cow. Tanning, that was definitely the answer.

“I had a dream,” she told him, rocking back after she’d taken a long, deep whiff for safekeeping.

There were post-mortem tension lines around his mouth, across his forehead, but he still raised an eyebrow. “Was it about slayers and vamps living in perfect harmony?” He’d put his hands on her belt, she realised; she could feel it when he fidgeted. More dead cow coming to rescue, it seemed. “Because, hate to break it to you, love, but I don’t think it’ll catch on…”

“What?” she asked, blinking, finally actually listening to what he was saying. “No! Pay attention.” (It didn’t count as transference when he was meant to be doing it too.) “You’re gonna think it’s important.” OK, maybe ‘important’ wasn’t the right word, but she had a feeling he was going to think _something_.

Backing away, Spike put on what she bet he thought of as his ‘serious’ expression. It was mostly more frowning. “Right. Fine. Go on.”

For a moment she waited, listening to the murmur of Willow and Dawn still talking in the dining room, the whir of a fly or something killing itself on the light fitting. She almost expected him to fill the silence for her, but she’d forgotten that he actually had the capacity to shut up when he wanted to hear her talk.

“OK, so, I had this dream,” she repeated, dropping her eyes and trying to find her way through it. No way to put it off anymore. “And it was all cringey subconscious stuff, coffins enlarging into crypts, dresses turning into sheets, moody softcore getting, you know, less – and you were there, obviously.” Glancing up, she checked to make sure he didn’t think she was having sex dreams without him, because she’d never really been wired that way and that sort of crisis was the last thing she needed. The gleam in his eye made her think she was probably OK. “But that was when it got weird. Like, horror-movie weird.” She didn’t look back down at this point, because it was important he understood this part, otherwise the rest wasn’t going to come over well. “I felt like I was burning up, or you were cooling down, or something, and it all became really obvious that you were dead and I was way too alive; I think in the dream body temperature was the main sort of alive we were talking, because you didn’t suck it up like usual, you just… Melted. Burned up. When I was, um…”

Blushing, Buffy really didn’t want to spell out the specifics of what had been happening. Dawn and Willow were only a room away, after all. Spike was smirking, though, so it was all right: he looked like he was getting a mental picture, even if was probably a lot more pleasant than hers, and probably came with mood lighting and some good sex music.

Not quite able to keep her voice free of accusation, she continued, “And you, you were lying there, telling me to keep going! And –”

“I was probably having a good time,” Spike interjected, biting his tongue until she glared. “Sorry,” he said, not contrite. “Carry on.”

Lowering her voice again, Buffy tried to not let things run together. “Yeah, that was it,” she remembered, “you told me to carry on and said I knew what I was doing because we were both, well, dead.” He actually looked more contrite now, and she was grateful for it, because retelling this whole thing was bumming her out. “That was basically the end, but then I burned you up all the way, and that happened to burn me all up as well, because I was dead too. Cue horrible sweaty wake-up moment. Cue shakiness. Cue awkward jalapeño-inspired flashback. And…” She swallowed, treading delicately. “Cue, uh, minor problems when I feel like we’re getting, um – intimate.”

As he got what she was saying, Spike’s eyes went wide. If no other part of her story had gone in, that part certainly had. And, sure, he wasn’t actually an evil sex fiend and she did feel bad sometimes for thinking that about him way too often for it to keep its jokiness, but it was times like these when he made it easy.

“There’s no reason to look _so_ freaked out, you know,” she told him, feeling suddenly quite self-conscious that she’d worn such a come-on top. He continued to say nothing; she crossed her arms over her chest. He wasn’t expecting something this evening, was he? Sure, he’d probably been _anticipating_ something, because she sure as hell would have been, but expectation was different and, now that she was thinking about it, staring at his chest that obviously wasn’t going to move as he thought things through, she shouldn’t have said anything, should she?

Suddenly, then, he started talking, and it took her a moment to realise what he’d said. “Does this mean I’m in your house, then, eating with you and that, even though you have absolutely no intent to shag me?”

Internally, she winced. (Never date soulless vampires, she vowed, they’re like bastards on bad days.) Externally, she got angry, jerking up her chin to give him a piece of her fucking mind, complete with articulate, emasculating reasons why he was nothing more than the scum she’d Lysoled from the toilet bowl and, and –

– why was he looking at her with stars in his eyes, again?

Replaying his sentence in her mind, she realised he hadn’t actually added the _fuck that shit_ she could have sworn she’d heard a few seconds ago. With her insides softening into one big Buffy-shaped blob of jelly, she couldn’t help but tell him, “God, Spike, you are so weird.” Although, actually, it was possible that she was still slightly offended. “No,” she explained, more exasperated than gooey pretty quickly, “I’m not expecting any sexual favours for letting you hang out in my house. Or in my kitchen. Where we’ve been way too long.”

Spike was still lost in his own little world, so, when the doorbell rang, inconveniently but inevitably, she rolled her eyes and fully prepared to let him carry on daydreaming or whatever he was doing. Intellectually, she knew she was relieved that he’d taken things so well, but the actual feeling was more like one tiny onion layer of stress had been removed only to reveal another layer underneath it. Currently that was manifesting as worry over who was at the door, and whether it was going to be social services, who would think she was a hussy just because she’d worn some of her actually still nice clothes from the old days. Yes, she’d felt the shame a couple of moments ago, but wasn’t there a thing where she wasn’t supposed to feel that? And, anyway, that was in the private context between her and Spike and the way they communicated: open shirt meant he was ready to be ravaged; closed shirt meant he wanted to hear about her day – it was a code…

Before Buffy could take two steps towards the hall, Dawn’s voice was ringing out, _”I’LL GET IT!”_ and Spike’s hand was reaching out, gingerly touching her shoulder. “Wait,” he said, sounding far more grown-up than she usually expected him to.

So she did wait, looking back at him and the slight, constructive worry on his face. “I don’t know if it’ll go away,” she told him quickly, not sure if he’d gathered that from her rambling.

“Don’t matter,” he replied, just as swiftly. “I can be noble, you know. Gallant and all that.” There was joke mixed in with the serious there, and it had her smiling, actually feeling some of the lightness of her relief. “It’s true,” he tried to convince her, now definitely exaggerating. “There was no touching of ladies in my day, you know, none of this business in alleyways you’re so fond of.”

“Yeah right,” she scoffed, totally not believing him and the way he’d started to grin. “I bet you –”

_”BUFFY, IT’S for…”_

The talking, maybe the flirting that had leaked out, that stopped the moment Dawn’s yelling trailed off into uncertainty. With a look that made certain they were agreed, they rushed into the hall, where Buffy was immediately checking to see that Dawn was still standing unkidnapped.

She was. But that didn’t seem to mean that everything was OK; her face was full of fear. “She called yesterday,” Dawn began hopelessly, looking to the doorway.

Standing there, Buffy now saw, was the candle woman from the Magic Box, suit blazer still the same with its crisp cut seams. They were shown off pretty well by the way her hand was raised, holding up her police badge for inspection.

“Buffy Summers?” she asked. “My name’s Detective Lockley. I’m investigating the death of Katrina Silber and was hoping to ask you a few questions.”

Huh.


	2. Look at Them

Staring at the woman in the doorway, Buffy had to accept that they looked kind of similar. They were definitely around the same height and build, even if the cop was a touch stockier, her hair the colour of Buffy’s highlights all over. It was shoulder length, probably, but pulled back into a ponytail. She was older, more like thirty, and looked a hell of a lot more comfortable with life. Even if - there were bags under the other woman’s eyes, Buffy realised, almost like scars.

She glanced back at Spike, completely lost with this new turn of events. How was this relevant to her life, again? “Katrina...?” she asked. The name was kind of familiar, maybe, but she couldn’t remember where from. She came across a lot of dead women, not including herself.

Frowning, Detective Lockley looked like she was noting every single response. “The young woman whose body you found last week?”

At that point, Buffy knew, her muscles seizing up. It was her, she thought, it was that dead girl. Buffy had forgotten about the phone call to the police station, but apparently they had not. Clearly anonymous tip-offs didn’t preclude the cops finding out who had left them. _Well, crap._

Behind her, Dawn was asking “Buffy?”, looking young and strangely as if she wished she’d made normal mac’n’cheese for dinner. Far from her left there was Willow, sat at the table and not moving, trying to figure what was going on.

Battling panic, Buffy answered, “Um, yeah, I remember.” Spike remembered too; she could feel him bristling on her right. He’d advocated leaving the body like they’d never been there, but Buffy hadn’t able to do that, had felt responsibility, not only because as far as she still remembered the girl had been alive thirty seconds previously. It was her duty, her calling, to care about all the people that otherwise became nameless demon victims. She _had_ to look out for them, even if that meant paying the price. “What…”

Wait.

That was the other thing she had to remember, of course, because it wasn’t just a duty, it was a _secret_ duty, completely stupid and annoying and unnecessary though that was. She needed a cover story, something other than patrolling. Looking at Detective Lockley again, who was still watching, waiting through and absorbing Buffy’s silence, it was obvious that anything too vague wasn’t going to work. OK, well, she could mostly stick with the truth, couldn’t she? That she’d been with Spike? Moonlit shortcut to the movies with her boyfriend, that was a Sunnydale story, wasn’t it?

It wasn’t a story she could say in her house, though. There was someone else watching, after all: Willow, who didn’t know, who’d catch Buffy’s eye and frown when the word ‘boyfriend’ was mentioned, who lied almost as badly as Spike did when she was put on the spot…

Air jerked into her mouth from panic, and Buffy tried desperately to breathe it through, keep her head. This conversation, she could get through it, get through the questions – but she couldn’t do it here. “Is there somewhere we can go?” she asked the cop, trying not to sound like a murderer, certain she needed to get out nonetheless. “Like the station?” Oh crap, no, bad suggestion; they probably still recognised her there from all the times… “Or, um –”

“The Espresso Pump,” came Spike’s voice, proving he could at least be somewhat useful. But then he was good with plans, wasn’t he? Just not the follow-through. “There’ll be bugger anyone there right now.” That definitely sounded better than the station, and she could explain her nerves away with coffee.

Coffee seemed to be on Detective Lockley’s mind as well. “Sure,” she agreed, shrugging with a strange lack of suspicion. She smiled Buffy’s way. “It’s only to talk; I’m not charging you with anything.” That comment wasn’t very comforting, but Buffy wasn’t sure if it was meant to be, even though the deal kept getting sweeteners: “If you want your boyfriend to come, that’s fine too.”

Ignoring the gesture, Buffy concentrated on the content, to realise that this was the moment to start developing her story – the detective had assumed Spike was her boyfriend, so wouldn’t need to be convinced later, as long as Buffy confirmed.

Grabbing the opportunity, she did confirm, flashing a smile. “No, that’s OK,” Buffy said, hoping Spike would get what the hell she was talking about and hoping Willow could be convinced later it was all a cover up. Hoping she could keep the whole lot of this straight in her head even though she felt like she was on the edge of a cliff. “He has to… We were going to the store.” She turned her head, praying she could convince Spike to play along, maybe get him out of the house where Willow couldn’t question him with her resolve face. He’d crack like an egg, at least about this… “Right?”

Staring at her, Spike’s lips were parted in something like amazement. She really needed to start being better at this relationship stuff, if only to stop making him so surprised. She jerked her head, hopefully in a girlfriendy way that only came across as, _speak up_.

Finally he seemed to figure at least something out; he nodded, blinking rapidly. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah!” It sounded false enough to make her blush, but that didn’t have to be suspicious, did it? What the hell even counted as suspicious?

Silence hung for a couple of moments, but Detective Lockley seemed satisfied enough with it all. “So, the Espresso Pump,” she said, almost as if she were _trying_ to give away that she was new in town, which was a really odd response. Possibly useful? “That’s the coffee shop on Main, right?” She was smiling, even, as awkward as Buffy felt. “Good choice. I think I could use some caffeine.”

“Uh, OK,” she replied, reaching back to get her coat from the bannister, all the stories in her head freezing for just a moment as she wondered what the cop’s actually was. “Let’s go, then.”

As she left, Dawn still looked terrified. Buffy knew how she felt.

* * *

Her body clock was still screwed up, so it was really weird for Buffy to realise that they were driving through the early evening and it wasn’t even time yet to patrol. All the same, the Espresso Pump was basically empty. One coffee cup sat on an outside table, looking recently abandoned with a half-eaten muffin by its side. Inside, a bag-laden shopper was recharging near the doorway, but otherwise it was the staff and them.

This wasn’t surprising for a Monday, to be honest, and Spike’s plan had been pretty good. Open Mic was on Tuesdays and they had the house salsa band on Thursdays, but otherwise the Pump’s evening clientele tended to be strung-out students, and on Mondays they seemed to remember to study. Or were still recovering from the weekend. At least, that was how Buffy remembered student life, ancient history though it was.

The bar was line-free, so very quickly Detective Lockley had paid for their lattes and was gesturing for Buffy to choose a place to sit. Out of earshot from the staff was Buffy’s choice, if nothing else, so she led them to the back of the deep salon and its well-worn purple armchairs, engineering it so the low, sticky table sat between them.

“You didn’t have to buy me coffee, you know,” Buffy said as they settled, not sure how else to start things but wanting to make the first move. That made her sound innocent, right? A willingness to talk? Of course, it was all a complete lie: she’d been planning to ask for water and the contents of her pockets boiled down to lint and a grocery receipt. (Potatoes, discount pizza and the bottle of Coke she still felt guilty about.)

“You work at the Doublemeat Palace, right?” the detective replied, sitting with a legs open in a way that made her look much more butch than her hair did. She drank her coffee pretty firmly as well, projecting an aura of Tough Chick that Buffy had always tried to avoid, just in case it gave her strength away. “I figure you don’t need to waste, what, a half-hour’s pay? Forty minutes? All on one coffee you’ll drink in less than that.”

“I didn’t need to have the coffee,” she persisted, not wanting to get off her guard with this woman, but still savouring every sip of creamy-java goodness that passed her lips. It was way better than what the Palace served, and pseudo-artsy canvases beat motivational elephants any day. Not that she wasn’t still suspicious. “And how do you know that I work there?” She had to have been eavesdropping, at the Magic Box; it would be all too convenient if she’d actually wanted candles. Or knew about the occult.

Raising her eyebrows, Detective Lockley didn’t immediately say anything. With the blue eyes and platinum hair, no make-up, the look was almost familiar, and Buffy found herself inclined to think she might be reasonable. Not that that made any sense, since Spike was one of the least reasonable and most pig-headed people she knew, but Buffy was listening attentively all the same when the cop carried on, “Does it bother you that I know?”

OK, scratch that. Reasonable or not, a question like that was clearly a covert attack. Buffy had to remember where she was. “Bother’s the wrong word,” she replied, regrouping; she tried to smile, be more pleasant, more guileless, but it mostly came out as a grimace. “I mean, duh, obviously my job isn’t a secret, it’s just… I’m not gonna be there forever, you know?” Why did she say ‘duh’, really? Now she sounded like a vapid Barbie doll. And where exactly was she planning on going after the DMP? She was probably coming across delusional to boot.

Yet Detective Lockley nodded, at what Buffy didn’t know. “I get it,” she said, leaning forward to put her coffee down, then resting her forearms on her knees, palms spread open. It was like she wanted to chat, rather than interrogate her about a murder. “Between you and me,” she confessed, “Sunnydale’s not where I planned to end up either. I’m not much for small town nightlife and the pay at Sunnydale PD isn’t overly competitive, but…”

“Where were you before?” Buffy asked as the woman lapsed into silence. She was thinking that maybe curiosity would count in her favour, or at least that staying on this subject would deflect attention from her. Crossing her legs, Buffy clutched her coffee over her knee, savouring the warmth from the mug. “Were you in LA or something?”

As a strategy it seemed to work quite well: for some reason, Detective Lockley laughed. “Am I that obvious?” she asked, looking around their empty, awkward coffee shop, glancing up to the dusty ceiling fan. In LA it would be shinier, Buffy thought. “I never figured I came across like a city gal, but I guess the ‘small town’ thing gave it away, huh?”

Buffy shrugged. “I dunno, I guess, I mean – I’m from LA too, so I always think about there first. And Sunnydale _is_ pretty small.”

“Really?” For some reason, the cop didn’t actually look too surprised. “How did you end up here?”

Maybe it was because no one ever asked her that question, or maybe it was because the answer had to do with slaying, or maybe it was just because Detective Lockley wasn’t that good a liar, but Buffy felt like she’d been set up. And so she didn’t answer, letting the silence hang while she took another slurp of her coffee, and then replying with a question. “Oh, you know…” she led it in. “There was stuff. But, hey, aren’t we supposed to be talking about Katrina?”

Detective Lockley frowned, and Buffy felt like she’d failed a test.

She sat back at this point, the cop, narrowing her eyes in a way that made it quite clear she was reading as much into this conversation as Buffy was trying to skim over. “Sure,” she said, sounding disappointed but resigned that situations would always let her down. “OK. Why don’t you tell me about that?” Then, however, she seemed to warm to the topic, picking at the thread on the arm of her chair. “I mean,” she commented. “You’re curious for an anonymous.” Buffy shifted, uncomfortable. “You called the station, not 911, so somehow you must have known Katrina was dead beyond helping, even if you wanted to act like Jane Public who wouldn’t call a hospital. On top of that…”

Pausing, Detective Lockley shook her head, as if faced with a particularly irritating puzzle. Buffy gulped.

“Usually anonymous callers won’t give their name because they panic,” the woman continued, apparently getting into this now. “You can play back the recordings and hear that they’re afraid. But you, if you listen to your call like _I_ have a dozen times, what you hear is someone selecting _exactly_ what information they’re gonna give, like they want the body to be found, but don’t want to give away how much they know. And, I mean…” She was closing in for the kill now, shifting in her chair to prop her elbow on the back of it. “As far as I’m aware you don’t have any forensic or medical training, so I don’t know _how_ you know. I’m left asking myself, why does this underemployed ex-co-ed know about livor mortis? I mean, how would _you_ explain it, Buffy?”

The silence that followed was filled by the dusty ceiling fan.

“I…” Buffy had no idea what to say. Adrenaline was leaking into her muscles, seizing them up with the urge to flight; she could feel her knees bending in preparation. The dingy interior of the Espresso Pump wasn’t enough to hide her blush, she was sure of it, and for some reason she could not believe that in all her years of slayer training she had never asked Giles how she was supposed to cope with questions like this. “I read a lot of books…?”

“But you don’t, do you?” It wasn’t like Detective Lockley’s expression was unkind, but she definitely seemed impatient with Buffy’s bullshit. Not that the bullshit had really started flowing yet, and other than which Buffy obviously had nothing to give her, but maybe the fake smiling had been a bad idea. “I spoke to your professors, and –”

“You spoke to my professors?” Buffy couldn’t help but ask, surprised and her voice very small. It was one thing that the detective knew about the Palace; it was kind of another that she’d tracked down her record at UC Sunnydale. That was from her life before, when things _had_ been good. That was different.

Dectective Lockley didn’t seem to think it mattered. “Yes,” she said. “A Professor… Lillian, was it?” Recalling the name made her frown, but it only made Buffy’s stomach clench. “He remembered you, which I gather is quite an achievement for an absentee sophomore who left over a year ago.” The woman shrugged. Artfully. “Anyway,” she continued, “he told me something interesting, namely that your grade profile was really odd for someone like you, who wasn’t on any sort of scholarship.” She smiled at Buffy then, like it was some kind of sly joke, before explaining, “People with grades like yours, he told me, tended to be the intelligent jocks: they could perform when they had time to do the reading, but most of the time they prioritised, so they never really progressed as far as they could.”

“I –” Buffy cut in before she could stop herself, momentarily irritated. She was not a _jock_ ; she was a freaking vampire slayer, which was a hell of a lot more important than stupid college football or whatever. She couldn’t say that, of course, and the detective’s smile had become a smirk as she watched Buffy’s rage grow, so Buffy forced herself to sit back. Meekly, she invited, “Carry on.”

Working out where she was, Detective Lockley frowned as if to apologise, before saying, “With your mother, Professor Lillian said it made sense.” Her voice was softer, more kind. “He assumed it had been going on for a while, affecting things.” Buffy swallowed, feeling the despair creep back. It seemed to push the cop on more urgently, bring her forward. “You’d kept up well, considering, he told me, and had been what he’d call conscientious for someone in your situation. And –” Now they were back at business-like suspicious. “– to get by with the time you had available, obviously smarter than your grades would give you credit for.”

The words washed over Buffy in a way she wasn’t quite able to process. If this was an interrogation technique, it was working: Professor Lillian thought she was _smart_? That was almost incomprehensible – but then she _had_ tried hard, hadn’t she, to get her assignments in on time all year? She could almost cry to know that had been appreciated…

Oh, but now Detective Lockley was _looking_ at her, as if putting these particular cards on the table meant that she could be more obvious about staring. Smart probably wasn’t good as far as she was concerned. It probably meant potential murderer.

Dammit; when had this got out of hand?

“Um,” Buffy said, thinking she was probably supposed to reply about now. She swallowed. “So what are you saying? I don’t make any sense? Because, sure, with my mom and stuff, but… I just know some things about dead – people. It’s some stuff I know. That’s how I knew about Katrina. It’s not…” She could feel tears in her eyes from the frustration of trying to get out of this. “I’m not… I don’t…”

Exasperated, Detective Lockley seemed to slump. “If you could only hear yourself on that recording,” she said, “you’d realise how aggravating this is for me, Buffy. Because I can tell you now, since you don’t seem to be convinced, that you don’t know _stuff_ about dead bodies, you know _them_. They’re as familiar to you as they are to a coroner, even if you don’t have the medicine to describe it.” With that she clenched her jaw, steely aggression coming out before she said, “I just want to know _why_.”

Jumping at her voice, Buffy felt it as her tears suddenly came free from where she was holding them back. A sob escaped as well. She froze, covering her mouth with her free hand, but she couldn’t help it as the water started leaking through her mascara, escaping where she blinked. She felt like such a fool – but she couldn’t help it, just like the way she couldn’t help knowing about dead bodies, couldn’t help that she’d been one, that she slept with one. More than that she couldn’t tell any of this, couldn’t say it, just _couldn’t_.

It felt like an inevitable consequence of becoming the Slayer that she was turning stranger and stranger over the years. But then she couldn’t say that either, of course, was locked into this secret that gave her more secrets to keep, pushed her further and further into the corner, leaving her there with absolutely nothing to defend herself.

Honestly, she was tired of being stuck in this place.

“What…” Buffy hiccoughed at last, wiping at her dribbling tears, accepting. Silence was all that was left to her, so getting arrested was inevitable. Whimper not a bang, wasn’t that the way everything ended? Maybe she could use her phone call to get Giles on the line. He hadn’t called her in weeks. “What are you gonna do to me?”

Several emotions crossed Detective Lockley’s face at that moment. Sympathy, which was strange, because Buffy was fairly certain this woman never cried, always kept in control (she looked like the type); guilt; yet more frustration; confusion, definitely confusion. “I’m trying to get you to help me here, Buffy,” she said, nonetheless sounding slightly awkward in the face of Buffy’s tears. “Help me help Katrina. Isn’t that what you do? Isn’t that what you did that night?”

Not caring anymore, but feeling slightly melodramatic for suddenly giving up the way she just had, Buffy laughed. All the same, it looked like Detective Lockley really wasn’t on the right page, so she explained, “I don’t help anyone.” She sniffed, humour not quite leaving her. “If I was meant to help Katrina, then I failed. I’m pretty much a failure; haven’t you heard?”

“No, actually,” the detective replied, blinking – almost as if she’d only just recognised who Buffy was. “Everything I’ve heard says the opposite.”

“Then what do you want from me?” Tired now, Buffy couldn’t be bothered with trying to get this out through some sort of mind game. Her voice was stronger and she asked outright, “What do you want me to say? If you have all the answers, what am I doing here?”

“I…” She looked shaken, Detective Lockley, and now she was looking at her watch. Maybe the Tough Chick act really an act; who the hell knew anymore?

But no, Detective Lockley was pulling herself together with nothing more than a long, deep breath. A breath she’d practised, it looked like, almost certainly. What the hell?

“OK. I’m gonna level with you,” she said, changing tack again and reaching for her coffee like she needed the crutch. Her voice had returned to its initial attempt at openness, but there was an edge of exhaustion that hadn’t been allowed in before. Now she actually sounded like someone Buffy could get along with, if it hadn’t just been made more than obvious that that was not going to happen. “I’m surprised you didn’t know,” Lockley added. “Katrina’s death was declared an accident, injuries consistent with her fall down a nasty looking hill.” Looking over her mug, the woman seemed to be making sure she had Buffy’s full attention. She continued, “But that didn’t cover everything. Her death was called as an accident the same way that a lot of deaths around here get called accidents. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Buffy was definitely understanding something, but it couldn’t, _couldn’t_ be what she thought it was. No way was this cop implying she knew about demons; it had to be something else. Exactly what that was, she didn’t know. “I…” she started, like she seemed to be starting every sentence this evening. “No,” she covered, not well. “What?”

Grimacing, the other woman didn’t seem that inclined to get explicit about things either. “When I was in LA,” she tracked back, “I got interested in – more unexplained crimes. It wasn’t popular, which was the main reason I had to leave. But I know what it’s like, to think that no one will believe you when you tell them something.” Suddenly she seemed quite earnest, desperate for Buffy to share her pain, even though she was obviously older than Buffy and it felt really strange to have someone her senior staring at her like she alone could understand. Although, the blue eyes, they were getting familiar again. “I know what it’s like to have people think you’re crazy,” Detective Lockley continued, making Buffy wonder what her first name was. “And I know what it’s like to have a mission all the same, even when you feel like you’ve lost it.”

Actually, Buffy was starting to believe that she possibly _did_ understand. But, all the same, she highly doubted this woman had also spent time in a mental institution, and, frankly, she was the one with the gun: Buffy was not going to bring up the D word first. Not the V word either. And so she shrugged, uncertainly, not up for sharing and hoping the detective had some other point.

She seemed to realise Buffy wasn’t going to answer, thankfully, and gathered herself again, setting herself business-like. “OK,” she said. “Look, what I’m asking is… When I was in LA, I worked with a consult, a PI, someone who knew – the other world. Kind of a jerk. Apart from when he… Anyway.” She shook her head. If Buffy hadn’t known better, she would have thought the detective was talking about Angel (didn’t he call himself a Private Eye down there?), but that was ridiculous and would mean they were living in way too small a world. “Without that contact my investigation didn’t always go so well, so I was hoping we might… You need a job, don’t you?”

Finally, at long last, Buffy got it. The coffee; the smiling; this was all making sense. It wasn’t an interrogation – it was a proposition. For her to consult with the police. On slaying.

Wow, did she feel stupid.

Also, however, that was never gonna happen.

“Uh, um, sorry, but…” She was putting her coffee mug down, brushing down her pants. It felt like she’d been hit on under false pretences, and now she had even less idea what to say than before. “I don’t think it would work,” she told the detective quickly, trying to ignore how hopeful she looked. It couldn’t work, she was certain. “I’m not a team player, and –” Law enforcement gave her the heebies; they had too much authority and not enough of a clue. And they’d been working with Mayor Wilkins, hadn’t they, way back when? Besides, this was barely any different from charging for slaying straight out, and she couldn’t do things that way, her ethics wouldn’t let her, what was left of them. She couldn’t prioritise what she did based on what the police were paying her to do; she had to save the world the best she could, as many people as she could, every night – and day, if necessary. “I’m really sorry,” Buffy finished, starting to stand up, hoping she could go before Detective Lockley decided she owed her for the coffee.

“Buffy, wait,” the cop said immediately, putting her hands on the arms of her chair as if she was going to stand as well, but then resisting as Buffy hovered, still on the far side of the coffee table. “Why…? I’m not saying you have to sign on or wear a uniform; you’d be independent, wouldn’t need a PI licence, even. We could just try it for this case, see how it goes…”

Blinking, Buffy didn’t sit down, but didn’t leave either. Something wasn’t quite adding up. “What’s there to solve?” she asked, lowering her voice. Maybe she was gonna drop the D word after all. “There were – demons.” Detective Lockley didn’t flinch. Buffy let it go. “Time-swirly scalp-tingling demons; I came across them when Spike and I were patrolling –” And there was another very obvious reason not to get involved with the police. They thought Spike was her boyfriend now, so how was that going to go down when they realised he never went out in the sun? Authority meant conformity, at the Palace as much as everywhere else. Spike wasn’t allowed there, and if she did this, slayed officially, he wouldn’t be allowed there either, would he? Live bodies only. “We – I slayed them.” She had to keep him out of this. “Katrina was there; I thought I’d hit her; she was rolling down the hill – but when we – I found her she was stiff and her shoulders were going blue, so I knew it couldn’t have been me. They got her the night before.”

 _When I should have been there._ Buffy remembered as she finished, losing all of her steam to guilt. Swallowing it away, Buffy watched Detective Lockley’s confusion and hoped that she could leave now, that that would be the end of it.

It wasn’t. “But she wasn’t killed in the cemetery,” the detective said, nonplussed. “The body was moved there.”

Wait, what?

Now Buffy sat back down, staring at the other woman’s pinched expression.

How did she even know?

Pulling a notebook from her jeans pocket, Detective Lockley checked her facts, looking nervous as she openly tried to be convincing. “Yeah; post-mortem bruising and she didn’t get that head wound in the clothes she was wearing.” Buffy could barely take it all in; her mind was racing. Katrina had to have been killed in the cemetery, didn’t she? “Defensive wounds on her hands…” What else could it be? “But – underneath her fingernails was cleaner than you’d get at a manicure.” At last the detective said it, raising her eyes to Buffy’s, “We’re looking at a murder victim here, even _with_ the claw marks to scare off the coroner.”

“Who… Who did you say she was again, Katrina?” Buffy asked, thoughts starting to move in her head. The name _was_ almost familiar after all – and Anya had said that the demons were only supposed to cause slight temporal disturbances. ( _Murder_ , though? With the demons as a cover?) A whole day hadn’t really made sense, Anya had said, even though there’d been no other explanation at the time.

Detective Lockley was looking down at her notes again. “Katrina Silber,” she said, scanning. “Twenty-two year old senior at Dutton Tech, majoring in robotics…”

Oh.

April the Sexbot. Trina. _**Warren.**_

What the hell had he done?

Buffy could feel as the blood drained from her face; Detective Lockley was watching. “What is it?” she asked.

“I know who killed her,” Buffy explained, absolutely certain. “Warren Mears.” And in that moment it was all worked out, she realised, even as she kept her swearing to a hiss. “Bastard! God; he tried to set me up! Son of a bitch, I can’t even…”

“Hang on,” the other woman interrupted, pulling a ballpoint from the binding of her notebook and noting. “Warren… Mears? Who’s he? How do you even – what proof do you have?”

Buffy groaned, urgency kicking her patience into touch. She’d known this was coming, hadn’t she? Something bigger, something she had to – “He’s her ex-boyfriend,” Buffy explained quickly, certain she couldn’t do anything while the dectective was still here, “but, look, this is why this whole freelance thing is never gonna work. I don’t do stuff the way you do OK? I figure things out, I go smash; I figure out it’s a human and –” _I go smash something else._ “– there’s nothing I can do.” That was what it came down to.

“But why not?” the detective answered, sounding reasonable as she recapped her pen. “OK, you work on intuition, but maybe that’s all we need you for – I’ve got a lead, which I didn’t have before; I’ll check it out, call in, and after that…”

It sounded nice in theory, but, unfortunately, Buffy’s urge to kill was kicking into overdrive, and she was pretty sure Detective Lockley would never understand that part. In the end any alliance was going to be just like the Initiative, ancient magic and modern forensics coming together in perfect discord in a way that would get dangerous, fast, and probably leave Buffy in a worse situation than before. She had too much to worry about to risk this, too much instability in her shitty life to gamble on making it better.

Going for the way she’d seen Giles kill conversations before, Buffy rose to her feet and stuck out her hand, needing to patrol, trying not to feel bitter. “I’m sorry, but this isn’t gonna work out,” she said, attemping to stay in control. “And it’s been nice talking and everything, but I’ve gotta go.”

Detective Lockley shook her hand, and that was fine – but then she held it a moment too long. “I’m not gonna give up on this, you know, Buffy.” She looked serious, something deep in her eyes. “It took me so – it took a while, but I’ve got a job to do. Believe me on that.”

“I do.” Just as convinced that she was going to have to let it go, however, Buffy told her, “But I’ve got a job to do too.”

* * *

A dozen demons dead, one sword won and then lost in something melty, the house was dark when Buffy finally got back. That wasn’t surprising; it was late, but Buffy stared at it all the same, feeling taunted. She remembered now that Willow had had her Spellcasters Anonymous thing, so probably Spike had stayed with Dawn, maybe, but he’d have gone home about an hour ago, most probably. That was a good thing. Definitely a good thing, no matter how it felt like the contrary, because she was tired and didn’t need the awkwardness. Plus it proved that he’d got the message about the lack of sex they were doomed for. Yay.

There was no one left downstairs: Buffy checked, but all she had to greet her was an empty, blacked-out house. Fine. That left her with the choice of whether she heated up some dinner or gave up and went to bed. Bed was the most tempting.

Not quite able to resist the grumbling in her stomach, however, Buffy gloomily compromised. Grabbing a spoon she headed to the fridge, pulled out the casserole dish and sat with it on the floor with it by the cabinets, letting her head rock back against the units' meagre support. There wasn’t much left of Dawn’s quesaroni – four good portions had been taken out, so Buffy could imagine the others had eaten pretty well after she’d left, had a really nice, normal dinner. It was shame Willow was gay, Buffy decided as she dug her spoon through the congealed lump, hit the enamel – if Willow weren’t gay, after all, then she and Spike could get together, adopt Dawn and have happy family meals every day, keep Buffy in the back bedroom and feed her leftovers when she was good. That would be easier, wouldn’t it? Buffy figured she wouldn’t have to do anything then.

Cold, the goo didn’t quite have the same flashback effect on her as before. The jalapeños still burnt, but the overwhelming sensation in Buffy’s mouth was of the claggy, cheesy mess. Not that she wasn’t OK with that.

 _That_ was pretty good, actually; she was a cheese fan and it went down well. The whole lot went down, in fact, eventually, leaving them with no more leftovers and one cheesy casserole dish to clean. Buffy stood up and balanced it precariously on the dinner plates already in the sink. (Eh, she decided; she’d do dishes tomorrow.)

After rinsing her mouth with a glass of water, the glass keeping intact this time – she could manage these basic tasks when there was no one around to see it – Buffy headed up to bed. She felt exhausted and was hoping, mostly, that her night would be dream-free and that tomorrow’s routine would follow its pre-set plan. It was a birthday plan, which was essentially an oxy-wotsit, but whatever, she was hoping.

She didn’t notice the body in her bed at first, trudging into her room, not until she turned the light on. Then, suddenly and certainly, there was no doubt it was there, snuggled up under the covers. Not at home, back in its crypt, but here.

Buffy sighed, trying not to feel loved. “I know you’re not asleep, Spike,” she said, trying not to sound amused. It was difficult, though, because when he feigned the appearance he moved, and snuffled, and kicked the covers: everything, essentially, that he didn’t actually do when he was sleeping. “And why are you in my room?” She even tried to get some anger into that question, but it mostly came out hopeful. Giving up, she shut the door behind her then moved to check the curtains, walking out of her shoes as she went. Spike was still pretending he couldn’t hear her, so she sat on the bed by his feet, not quite sure what to do, not wanting to throw him out, but pretty sure she’d have to. Hadn’t she told him not to come? “I thought you were gonna be gallant,” she ended up saying.

Really not so blearily, Spike finally opened his eyes at that point, looking down at her over his bare arm. It was pretty enticing, that was the awful thing; it wasn’t fair. “You know, Summers,” he said nonetheless, “Gallantry doesn’t preclude a bloke liking his bed warmed up.”

“Oh, right,” she said, not quite believing him, but still pretty tired. “Is that what this is?” He did look comfortable, though, so it was only a moment before she was scooching up the bed and flopping back, over the covers but with her head on the pillow next to his. “It’s an ‘I can’t sleep without you’ thing.” She mocked, “You should’ve told me you were needy.”

Not grateful for _that_ comment, Spike rolled his eyes – but nonetheless didn’t move. It was kind of presumptuous, wasn’t it? Him appearing in her room and going to bed in her bed? She had a feeling she was meant to be angrier about it, but when it came down to it his voice was nicer than the silence – and now he was reaching out to run his fingers over her clothed knee, pressure circling in a way that made her tingle. Stupid hormones. “So, go on then,” he said, somehow managing to judge the _exact_ moment when she relaxed, “what did she ask, small and blonde? You in the clear, or is this your last night as a free woman?” He sounded like he had some plans for that, which Buffy wasn’t sure really fitted with the ‘gallant’ thing.

“She offered me a job,” Buffy told him, turning her head and giving in completely to the bed-sharing idea. It wasn’t actually that hard. “Freelance consulting detective, or something, with her or the Sunnydale PD or, I don’t know… Demon duty, anyway.”

The motion on her kneecap paused. Spike looked impressed, but confused. “Like Sherlock Holmes for the ghoulies, you mean?”

“Uh… Who?” Buffy asked, more confused than him, definitely. Spike made the weirdest references sometimes. And why had the knee thing stopped? “Oh, wait;” she suddenly remembered, distracting herself, “you mean the guy with the dog? With the garden and the country house, and the cape made out of a picnic rug? With the matching hat?”

At that point he figured out who she meant. He was not impressed. “For Christ’s sake, woman; who _did_ your education?” the exclamation came out hushed, which thankfully at least implied that Willow and Dawn didn’t know he was here, but it was still totally unnecessary. “Guy with the dog…” He shook his head.

“Whatever,” she replied, not even insulted. Like she was meant to care about some old Victorian loser. “If he’s like some blanket-wearing Van Helsing guy who works with the police, then fine, yeah, like him.” She shrugged. “But it doesn’t matter anyway, because I turned it down.”

“You turned it _down_?” Now Spike was distracted as well, turning serious again and apparently even more dismayed than before. He leaned in closer, pulled up his arm so he could rest on it. “Why on earth did you do that?”

“It wasn’t gonna work,” she explained, resigned, shrugging. “I mean, come on; I need a job that gives me enough time to do slaying – how am I gonna do that if my job basically _is_ slaying, but slaying whatever the cops want me to slay?” And if that word soup didn’t convince him, nothing would. It convinced her. “We’d get our interests conflicted; it wouldn’t work.”

He blinked at her. “And the real reason is...?”

“Huh?” Confused, she rolled over herself, settling on her side so she could face him properly. “That is the real reason,” she said, kind of affronted. Hadn’t he heard the soup? “Why can’t that be the real reason?”

“Because it makes fuck all sense?” he offered, looking at her like she’d decided to start wearing her shoes back to front. “They’re offering to pay you for what you do anyway; if the strings aren’t too tight, why the bloody hell would you not go for it? The Doublemeat’s a shithole; you need out any chance you get.”

Instinctively, she tensed. He was right about the DMP, she knew that (didn’t she?), but the idea of leaving didn’t sit right with her. It didn’t make any sense. She needed to keep working so she and Dawn could keep living, couldn’t stop, couldn’t start getting her paid work confused with her slaying. That wouldn’t work; it _couldn’t_. Slaying wasn’t part of the real world. “But that’s the thing, about the strings – what if I needed to stop an apocalypse, or whatever, but they wanted me to do something else. I need the money, so I’d have to do everything they asked, but then what would happen to everything else I did?” She could see it happening, being pulled and twisted by her paycheck, lured into not helping the way she had a duty to help. She was a slave – or, how was it Anya had put it, a serf? – to the DMP as it was, but at least that was a building she could leave, a place that didn’t exist when she took the hat off her head.

“But don’t you have the same motives, you and the police, them being gits aside and you wearing much better outfits?” He was still appreciating her shirt, not that she knew when Spike’s looks at had started registering as appreciation rather than leering. Maybe it was something to with smelling like burger grease eighteen hours a day, seeing people cross the street so they didn’t have to walk by her. Or to do with the way that his looks tended to lead to multiple orgasms and a piece of spoken word. “You’re both meant to have those annoying do-gooder instincts – you know, like what you’ve got in spades,” he carried on. “You both want to stop people dying, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” she replied, shaking her head – not that it did much, just rustled her hair against the pillow. “They’ve got that thing where they need to prove how people were killed; I’m more into the executive _slaying_ kinda deal.”

“But only with demons, yeah?” Spike prodded, not letting it go. “They aren’t about to care what you do with them. And the humans –”

“But what about the Initiative?” All of her objections seemed to be making less sense now she was saying them out loud; wasn’t that great? “They cared about demons. They had us capture them so they could do weird experiments, remember?”

Unimpressed, Spike shot her a glare. “No. They’ve completely vanished from my mind.” Oh yeah. Chip. When the hell had she forgotten about that? She blushed, but Spike seemed to take that as an apology, storming on, “Sunnydale PD don’t have anything _like_ the funding for that sort of jaunt, love. They’ve got enough trouble keeping their human baddies locked up and fed. What they’ll be wanting is to get their stats up on the cheap, pay you enough to keep you quiet, but otherwise get the demon numbers down and not have to fudge their figures so much.”

“But…” And this was the thing she really wondered, in the end, even as it made the tension gather behind her eyes. “How much more can I _do_?” It sounded pathetic, but, actually, she didn’t care. “What am I supposed to make happen? I can’t… I’ve been trying as hard as I can for years and years and years, so how can they expect me to do any more, to make any bigger difference? There’s so much stuff going on,” she explained, feeling it tumble out of her, “with money, and the house, and Dawn – did she tell you? It turns out we might not be so poor, but to actually not be we’re gonna have to go through this giant load of stuff no one’s quite sure how to do. Isn’t that just great.” She slumped a little lower. “And, and maybe I can’t keep working at the Palace,” she continued, “but there I’ve actually _got a job_ that I’ve managed to keep, and that’s never happened before, and it’s like, because there’s such low expectations, they don’t mind if I’m weird and do slayer things, and no one wants to be my friend and make things awkward because no one wants to make friends there. Things are bad right now, but they’re working, aren’t they?” She looked at him desperately. “I _can’t_ fix things up again, Spike; I’m so tired, I don’t…”

Suddenly, cutting her off, he grabbed her hand where it was lying between them, his right seizing her left. It felt cold, dead, bony – dammit, again it was making her feel sick – but he held on and she didn’t shake free. “Why’s it I feel so dead, d’you reckon, love?” he asked, changing the subject. “All that stuff aside, what d’you think?”

“I don’t _know_ ,” she sobbed out, clenching his fingers in hers and feeling them too much, this her right hand inconveniently sans-gauze. It was just one more thing, wasn’t it? When it came down to it, she wasn’t allowed to be happy, so her life just screwed it up for her. When she thought she was coping, everything always decided to change things around, screw themselves up so she couldn’t keep going in a straight line. “It was all fine, and then…”

“It wasn’t fine, though, was it?” Spike’s blue eyes were pinning her down, like he knew the answer, or thought she knew and wasn’t telling. It made her feel hopeless. “When you first got back, you know I got the feeling you liked to chat me up ‘cause I didn’t matter. Sang that blasted song, didn’t I?”

“About you being dead and me not leaving you alone?” That, at least, she could answer. “Yeah, I remember, but I don’t –” It had never been about him being dead, had it? He’d understood because he’d been in the grave himself, because he wasn’t her friends, but she didn’t mean – “That didn’t mean...”

He frowned, briefly, hand warming in hers. “‘Course it didn’t,” he said in his comforting voice, even as it rang false.

“We had fun on the motorcycle, didn’t we?” She’d never said so at the time, but Friendly Buffy was trying to admit it when she enjoyed spending time with him, even retrospectively. “And then after, with the –” _Many bouts of dramatic Olympic fuckathons._ “That was fun?” Oh, crap, why was she talking in the past tense – it couldn’t be over, could it, this thing with Spike? That was the first time she’d thought it might be, actually seriously rather than just saying it in the hope he’d take it at her word, and it didn’t really sit the way she’d wanted it to. “I mean…”

“It had certain fun-like content, I’ll grant you that,” Spike replied, before sighing. “But I’ve been lying here, you know, trying to figure it, and I don’t know if anything really changed after that singing. I thought it had but then, you know…” Apparently without thinking, this thumb swept over the back of her hand, full of softness and certainly shocking through her. It was pleasurable and disturbing in equal amounts, enough to be unnerving. All the same, she knew what he meant; it was the violets and moonlight thing again, because who knew things could actually be approaching good between them? Buffy certainly hadn’t known before.

“I sang it back at you, didn’t I?” she commented, thinking about it, trying to remember what exactly her reasons had been. “When we had our curtain-call, um, moment; I wanted to feel alive, I remember that, knew that you were the only thing that made me feel even vaguely like I was, so I went with it. I mean, you’d saved me from the dancing and stuff, so…”

Apparently Spike hadn’t been much listening at that moment in the alleyway, however, because he looked confused. “Is that what you said?” he asked, wrinkling his nose. “I don’t remember much of what happened before the snogging…” And then he winked, verve returned for a moment. “I think you shorted something.”

Bringing her left hand into play, Buffy slapped him on the shoulder, causing rather a loud clap of sound that echoed through her bedroom. Whoops… “I did _not_ ,” she hissed, keeping her voice low as he snickered. Yet again, though, she suddenly found herself questioning her reaction, because hadn’t he just paid her a compliment? Why couldn’t he ever make his expressions match what he actually meant? “I mean… You weren’t paying attention because, clearly, you were too interested in my lips to listen to what I had to say. Because you’re a man and you’re evil.”

He bit his tongue, raising his eyebrows.

She felt herself getting slightly flustered, so she carried on, “Anyway, I was all about the aliveness, which I remember because I couldn’t actually believe I was singing, still – and maybe it’s best you don’t remember it because it was _really_ embarrassing, but, anyway. Umm…” Where was she going with this? Oh yeah, further embarrassing revelations, because those not having sex were doomed to talk about it, apparently. “And it did kind of work, I’m sure you’ll be really vindicated to hear –” Still smiling, Spike made a gesture like he was tipping his hat; Buffy rolled her eyes. “– but I don’t think the sex with you really changed anything apart from making my schedule harder.” And plunging her into fathomless depths of existential doubt when she came out the other side. All the things he used to _say_ , make her _feel_ …

Buffy frowned, thinking. All right, so she remembered one specific part of her existential crisis being nipped in the bud by the rather abrupt declaration that she wasn’t a demon, but she couldn’t figure out where the rest of it had gone – morphed into this pretty gloomy predicament, she supposed, but how? When? Why?

“Well,” the vampire in question answered, sounding very sensitive indeed, “throwing around my dead bones a bit probably didn’t feel…”

“No,” she stopped him, looking up and trying to be kind, if truthful. “I didn’t care about that when we started… It was only later; I used to wake up and it was afterwards I’d notice, maybe, sometimes I would – but it didn’t…” Strangely, he was looking at her with hope, and she was trying to think, trying to struggle through it all, and finally, clenching his body temperature hand, she felt like she could say, “I think… I never felt alive, back in the world, so I’d come to you, and you’d – we’d try, we’d do stuff, and sometimes that would be when…” Her voice dropped as a feeling of vulnerability swept over her, and she dared herself to trust him with what she wanted to say. “Sometimes you actually would make me feel alive, like I was functional, or whatever, and sexy, and – _happy_.” Why did that have to be such a terrifying confession? His face had gone blank, of course. It always did when he really cared. She carried on, “And that was when I’d notice, you know, how dead you were – physically. Because I’d feel so warm. I think. And then I’d run away.

“But it was better!” she cut into herself abruptly, remembering, one dead hand still tight and shivering in hers. “That stopped happening. This week – now – I don’t know, do I, do I feel like I’m alive all the time now? Is that what’s happened?”

Spike brought his other hand to clasp around where she held his – and it hadn’t started that way, had it? – before he ducked his head, like in prayer almost, to the point where she had to resist leaning in to meet him. His hands she could cope with. “Don’t know,” he murmured, like he thought this might have been it, but the actual truth of it made him feel sick. “Could see it, though, you on the edge of all this stuff, scared of change ‘cause you’ve stabbed a stake in it all. Can see how I wouldn’t fit.”

Colder than anything his touch had made her feel, she froze. It made him bring his head back up and she stared at him: it was dawning on his face, the idea that he’d done his part and was only holding her back now, settling in lines of tired, old-guy resignation in the weirdest twist ever.

He hadn’t imagined them staying together forever, it seemed like, even though she would have expected it; it was like this was the end he’d always foreseen, when she outgrew him, didn’t need his services anymore and moved on. It was even more pathetic than thoughts she’d had herself. “But you have to fit,” she told him, frankly not accepting any other idea. “That’s how this works. You’re part of the system.”

Her life, as she saw it, she decided now, had many things in delicate balance. Hel _lo_ – that was why she didn’t want to move jobs, or have to worry about the money stuff. If she took Spike out of that balance, where the hell would that leave her? Why wasn’t he fighting this?

“Spike, come on,” she said urgently, pulling some indignation out of him as she rolled back out of bed, standing with her hands on her hips. Less woeful, he sat up immediately, the duvet falling from his high chest to his hips. He got off on being naked, she was sure he did, so hopefully this was making him feel better. She had to say that she didn’t mind. “What the hell are you saying? If I’m feeling alive – then that’s good, right? Yay me? What’s with the maudlin?”

“Well, _apparently_ ,” he drawled, grouchy as a roused cat, “you feeling alive means my touch disgusts you, so forgive me for not being entirely sure where I fit in right now.”

“Yeah, but…” Buffy bit her lip, still not one-hundred-percent sure she was figuring this out right. “Well, for a start,” she went with, sardonic, “what happened to Mr. Gallant ‘I just wanna be with you’? _That_ didn’t last long.” Not that she could blame him. But that – that was the other thing. “Also, hey, newsflash!” She gestured, indicating his pleasingly undressed state. “I’m not actually uninterested in you, which maybe hasn’t been coming across so well, but I was hoping it had been clear all along that we’re in gross-out territory here, not trauma – or, not new trauma anyway – or me losing my, uh, interest in the… Men.” She trailed off.

Through the silence that followed, he stared at her, and she was struck by the ridiculousness of the fact she was still keeping her voice down, and had gone through that whole spiel in a stage whisper.

“Gross-out territory?” Spike asked at last, sounding almost sublimely unimpressed. “ _Gross-out territory?_ ”

She blushed. “Well, yeah; like when you go to a Halloween party and you do the thing with a blindfold, and you can’t eat grapes for a week – or like Dawn and the monkey-brain marshmallows…”

“Right,” Spike interrupted, climbing out of bed in one long stretch of pale, gleaming, tasty sinew. She may actually have licked her lips. “You,” he pointed at her (she jumped). “Get in that bed. Got no intention of making you uncomfortable, but this is fucking ridiculous. Time to test some limits.”

A shiver ran through her, but it wasn’t entirely of the bad kind. “Is that your plan?” she asked, watching him walk. “Seduce away my problems?” To be honest, that was the kind of plan she could get behind, even if she wasn’t entirely sure it made sense. At least it wouldn’t take much effort.

Spike, at this point, stopped by the light switch. “I’ll have you know,” he told her, sounding slightly bitter, slightly admiring, “I’ve never once managed to seduce you. Even when I try I always end up doing what you want.”

With that he sent the room into darkness, but Buffy still shrugged, trying to disperse a little energy. “You would say that,” she said, already feeling where he’d hooked her in.


	3. That's Not Your World

Things took a little while to get going, it had to be said. In most ways it was probably easier in the dark, because even if he likely could see how she grimaced when she first touched his face, she couldn’t tell how he looked watching her, and they could both pretend it didn’t happen. In some ways it was harder, naturally: movements came out of nowhere, surprising her too thoroughly sometimes, freezing up any progress so they had to start again. She apologised, feeling it, but Spike didn’t actually seem to mind the challenge. Not that she wondered why.

Eventually they were back to where they’d been in the light, lying on their sides facing in – even if they were both under the covers now. “Right,” Buffy whispered, hearing his breathing, feeling hers, tense in her entire lower half and certain they were getting _somewhere_. “Let’s try again…”

Gingerly, she reached out her left hand, bringing it to rest on his shoulder. That was fine, she could do that. It felt comfortable, even, enough to make her smile. The only problem was leaving there, going down his chest and spreading her fingers across his pecs. There, Spike’s muscles flexed underneath her, couldn’t help it of course, and it was like she was touching up some sort of silicon-coated machine, convincing herself it was real.

But it _was_ real, she remembered. His breathing was harder, laboured as she brushed his nipple, and that was her doing, not a programmed response. There was scar tissue on his chest, like there was on him everywhere, and she knew he wouldn’t react this way to an enemy, to someone he felt nothing for. He wasn’t just a corpse; he breathed. And it was that sound she focused on, those gasps she seized to wall up her disquiet.

Moving down, surer, trying to be confident, she was struck by the thought that had she’d been trying to ignore all day. Namely why was his lack of body temperature really getting to her so much? There were billions of sex toys in the world, some of them built by murderous nerds to look and sound like a human body, but they were all inanimate, all of them room temperature, needing to be warmed; why was this so different? It would be easy, you’d have thought, especially with the soundtrack, which was getting louder now. Couldn’t she just imagine…?

 _No._ The answer came immediately as Spike played his part in the proceedings: deftly his right hand ran across her knee, drifting up her bare leg, past her hip. It was electric, at this stage wholly good, and then he went further, leaning in so he could reach up her back.

He was closer now, and the combination of his cold hand and cold breath made her shiver. This was as far as they’d managed to get before, the place they’d worked towards and where her upset nevertheless became stronger than her enjoyment. Because this was the moment she had to realise, didn’t she, that as much of death that was in him, there was life. He wasn’t a toy, no matter how he’d treated him, and he wasn’t just dead, the way she’d probably have quite liked him to be; he was right there with her, strange and foreign to the natural world, living in it, just about, and touching her.

“You all right, pet?” he asked, his voice so very close to her mouth.

This was such a basic clinch, even in slow-mo, but she was beyond being ashamed for having to learn it afresh. “Yeah, I think so,” she said, feeling every fraction of his handprint across her spine. Did that have to be a bad thing? Maybe she liked it, weird though it was. There were decades in that hand, a thousand skills; maybe that could be kind of cool? “I think…”

Keeping her hand strong and frowning with the concentration required, she let her fingers spread down lower, across Spike’s rapidly contracting belly. She waited there a moment, letting herself get used to the sensation, the idea of him, and then she went for where she’d destroyed in her dream. His thigh, solid as anything – but then it had been at first – rose up to meet her touch and she squeezed it, not yet feeling softness, not yet feeling rot. In fact, she didn’t feel anything of them at all as she stayed there; she could press into the flesh, feel it resist against fingers, less disgusting the more real it seemed.

“Buffy, love, _please_ ,” Spike groand, sounding tortured, reminding her of how much he enlivened this limb. She laughed as his fingers clutched against her back, and she felt terribly in control, terribly turned on, and mostly ready to try her luck.

Biting her bottom lip once, she leaned in the last two inches, not moving her hand from his reassuring thigh but letting her lips touch his. Lips were sensitive, and immediately and abruptly she could feel what she’d felt earlier in the evening, the coolness, the deadness – but it was different this time. Maybe because she was relaxing or maybe because he was on the edge of desperation (she had been feeling him up for, what, half an hour?), but she could feel so _much_ of him as he sank against her. Everything he wanted, everything he hoped for, everything he believed she could give him, it was all there. All the feelings that brought him to life were unavoidably apparent, like currents running over her skin, even if the actual expression came in gulping, silent cries against her mouth.

“Tell me – feel good,” he begged her after a moment, barely coherent as his forehead pressed up to hers. His hand was inching a new path, fingers teasing ribs like he wanted to find the front of her – not that she could blame him; her own hand was daring further, curling to his softer, cooler skin. It made him moan. “Gotta tell me, or –”

“Keep going,” she told him, in no uncertain terms, feeling like the bubble of worry inside her was shrinking the warmer she became, as she became hot enough not to perceive how different he was. Maybe that was cheating, but as his mouth fell back on hers and his errant thumb crept in, swept a crescent of sensation, she didn’t care.

When she took his cock in hand, it was like meeting an old, familiar friend. Definitely not marble-cold like her dream, even if it wasn’t exactly hot: the veins were all close to the skin and they were engorged enough for a great time, pulling in their blood through some sort of force, expending energy while they did it. She gasped and, of course, the thing took her hand like she loved it. As she explored, her heat came back to her, reflecting, morphing into firmness that resisted her more fully. “Hey presto,” Buffy thought, only to realise she was murmuring it against Spike’s mouth, pretty much in awe. “No disintegration.”

“We try our best,” Spike choked, sounding aggrieved, before taking the initiative to knock her over to her back. It was a good call – a really good call. The shift let their trapped arms free and she was more than happy to find new fingers running into her hair, kissing him harder as his hand framed her face. All the tingles that brought, they were good tingles, excellent – and when his other hand wandered lower, raising sweat, it felt perfectly reasonable to get out of his way. She sent both of her palms up his back, coasting for shoulder blades.

Her reactions were getting basically unconscious now, the panic of before swallowed up back inside. She didn’t even realise when her nails dug in, a response to his sweep between her legs, fingertips and knuckles making sure everything was OK. What she did realise, however, for entirely different reasons, was when his middle finger flicked up, took aim and pushed. That was the moment when she pulled herself up against him, cleaving eight perfect scratches high by his spine.

They slammed against the bed, unstable, winded to a gasp as one. He bit her tongue, but it didn’t really hurt, not like her scratches had to be hurting.

“Shit,” she hissed, trying to apologise. She was still clutching him, first in an attempt to keep the blood inside – but then because two fingers dug in further, curling and twisting her tight. “Shit, _Spike_ …”

“Fuck it,” he implored her, kissing her jaw, finding rhythm (at last). She could feel his blood on her fingers, and yet he was whispering, “You worry too much, love.” Breath was breaking up the words, but he kept telling her, sliding around her lower body so his hand had room to move, “Can feel it in you, the way you hold yourself back.” Buffy found herself moaning again, sucking his neck – he’d settled over her thigh, crushed his dick and her breasts between them, but that just meant she could feel _everything_ , every twitch, every sigh of his nerves, the full spectrum from his soft hand at her temple to the other, irreverent fingers, stoking her to full thrash. “You’re screaming to get out, love, can’t you hear it? Can’t you hear? Fuck, love, the _sound_ of you…”

She never knew quite what he was smoking at these moments. Possibly it was a supersenses thing, with him getting off on the sound her heart racing nought to sixty in under ten seconds, and that wouldn’t surprise her. That would be just like him, in fact. Unfortunately, it was completely impossible to express her dislike at being compared to a _car_ right at this moment, because his skin was in his mouth and she had a very definite need to clamp her teeth down on his shoulder. Which she did.

It wasn’t enough, though, not to relieve the tension. Her free leg started thumping the mattress, pulling him into the evilest chortle ever. She bit down harder, trying to stop it, squeezing her eyes shut.

Buffy knew this dead flesh on her tongue could feel pain, but its owner seemed OK with that: Spike felt more solid than ever at that moment, tensing and jerking towards her mouth, every erogenous nerve between them striking off in some violent chord. The explosion, when it came, almost certainly to make her cringe at the old dream’s symbolism, was more than enough to let her kill Spike first. He always liked her letting go, so the combination of teeth, nails and her foot flailing in to smash a heel behind his knee knocked him flat, roar choking like a sob in his throat. That sound, that good sound, combined with the sudden absence of motion, that was more than enough to set her off too.

The blackness of her room fell to silence. Not the silence she’d expected to sleep in and, honestly, not silence at all. If they’d been dead there would have been nothing, no sound, but as it was the air was filled with deep, wheezing breaths; pain, pleasure, ecstasy, fear and a dozen other unspoken feelings drifting into the night around them. Still, as silences went, it worked for her.

“So,” Spike gasped after a while, just as she carefully unclamped her jaw. “How d’you feel?”

She snorted, nudging him so she could sit up a bit. And breathe. “Hmm,” she said when there was air to do so, reaching out to turn on the bedside lamp. Whoa. “OK, I guess.” Rapidly she blinked against the fierceness of the light.

By her side, Spike was lounging indolently, every inch of his body on display now that the covers had gone. She’d smeared thin stains of red all round his shoulders, left a trail of deepening hickeys to full-on teeth marks, but he was grinning like she was the best thing he’d ever seen. “You bloody liar!” he exclaimed, absently sucking off his fingers. “I had you fucking – _paralytic!_ ”

OK, she couldn’t help it; a smirk spread out across her face. Still, she shrugged, gesturing to her stomach and hoping he wouldn’t notice that she was glowing like a Christmas tree. “Yeah,” she said, the frissons of sensation in her tongue feeling nothing but good right now, “but I think we can both see who got off with an embarrassing lack of help.” This was the point, however, to reach for a tissue, which she did.

“Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong,” he said, gesturing for the pass so he could clean himself up. She did it for him instead, grabbing an alcohol wipe for his shoulders as well. “First of all –” He flinched as she swiped at him, but mostly put up with it. “I _had_ help.” On his stomach, though, he was ticklish, so she swiped harder, threw the tissues over him so she could poke properly with her fingers. “Second of all –” _Now_ he was trying to bat her away, wriggling as she giggled until he’d had enough and grabbed her wrists, pinned them above her head. “Second of all,” he repeated, mock-exasperated even as his cock was on the rise again, “a gentleman feels no embarrassment so long as his lady’s needs are met.”

 _Aww…_ she almost wanted to say, catching on. She gave up, smile turning sappy as she gazed up at his earnest face.. She knew full well this precise predicament made her more prone to gooiness than usual, but that was sweet, wasn’t it? It made her want to say really nice things.

Thankfully he winked, saving her the trouble. God, it was so _hard_ not to think he was real now, much harder than it had ever been easy before. “See,” he said, grinning through his teeth, eyes too bright with victory. “I told you I could be gallant.”

If this was gallantry, she thought as Spike started fumbling behind her mattress ( _“Now, where did I put those scarves?”_ ), there was definitely something to be said for it.

* * *

On her twenty-first birthday, Buffy woke up feeling almost wholly good about the morning. Looking at the alarm clock, prominent on her bedside table, it was before Dawn left for school, even, and she was awake and feeling breezy, so she got up to go and see her. Practically like a proper guardian, she thought. Spike was definitely asleep by her side, face down against the pillow, but that was OK, she told herself, blissfully dream-free today. She put on pyjamas and a dressing gown, tucked him in and kissed him on the check before she left, figuring she could untie his wrists from the bedframe later.

Dawn looked surprised to see her in the kitchen, glancing up guiltily from where she was finishing some math with a glass of OJ. “Oh, um, hey, Buffy!” she said, apparently torn between happiness and embarrassment – until she remembered. “I mean, happy birthday! Yay! Twenty-one!” Then she gushed, math forgotten, “Wow, you can drink and stuff! How does it feel? No more demon bars for you, right?”

Ready to be happy today, Buffy laughed, starting to move around the kitchen island. “Yep, that’s the plan!” How did Dawn know about the demon bars, anyway? Oh, right, she’d had a shift of hair-holding duty that particular night… Trying to forget that particular catastrophe by avoiding Dawn’s eyes, Buffy found herself by the stove. “Hey, d’you want some eggs?” she asked. “We’ve got eggs.” There was no need to mention she was starving.

“Sure,” Dawn replied, before continuing with her theme, semi-jokingly (Buffy hoped), “You should go somewhere. With Spike or something – like, somewhere cool. Not the Bronze. You should... Ooh!” she squealed. “Oh, you should do karaoke!” OK, Buffy wondered, where the hell did Dawn get these ideas from? _Karaoke?_ “Can you imagine Spike with karaoke?” she continued. Actually, now that Dawn mentioned it… “He’d be so awesome. You could make him do Billy Idol!”

“I’m not sure he’d go for that,” Buffy finally replied, barely holding in laughter as she egged. “Though I’m so with you on the potential.” Seriously, Billy Idol was inspired. She knew Spike hated him ( _‘because the bastard stole my sodding look, made it cheap as fucking dishwater; let the Contingent down, selling out with that MTV bollocks’_ – whatever _that_ pile of random was supposed to mean), but it would amuse the hell out of her. And, ooh, he could do that thing where he sang lyrics at her and their eyes met across the room, couldn’t he? With the lights dimming and everyone clearing a path when he jumped off the stage. Probably she’d hate that sort of cheese if it actually happened, but in her fantasy there was a convenient trapdoor that dropped them straight back in her room and…

“Hellooo?” Dawn was saying, far, far too knowingly. “Earth to Buffy?”

Sternly, Buffy shook herself, looking down to see her minidress transform back into PJs. OK, she was seriously spacey this morning. And not the way she usually was either.

Sighing, she flicked some oil at her sunnysides. “You know he’d never do it,” she lamented. “Anyway –” Turning her head over her shoulder, Buffy nodded at the math not being done. “What’s with the homework?” she asked, being responsible. “I thought you were finished up yesterday?”

Squirming, Dawn held her pen more studiously over the page. “I’m almost done – it’s only three problems and they aren’t so hard.”

The practical part of Buffy’s brain reminded her that she’d used to do ten problems in the recess before class, so this wasn’t a big deal. She’d had Willow’s help and the answers, but it wasn’t a big deal. Unfortunately, the panicky part of her brain panicked. “But you’re gonna have eggs in a minute!” The whites were getting all solid and bubbly: she was Buffy, Egg Queen! As long as she didn’t burn them. “And – and – what period is math?”

“Fifth,” Dawn replied, looking at her like was seriously uncool. “It’s gonna be fine, Buffy. In fact –” She shut her notebook defiantly, clearing a space on the table. Buffy remembered how much she’d wanted to share a meal the night before. “I declare this a homework-free zone. It is now an egg zone. A birthdayified egg zone.” An adamant Dawn was strangely terrifying to behold. “I’ll get the bread.”

Buffy watched as Dawn hopped down from her stool, amused as she marched to the bread bin with an ‘aha!’ of victory, continuing to find some plates. However, this had the unfortunate effect that neither of them noticed when Willow appeared in the doorway.

“Um, hey, guys,” she said, sounding ever so slightly shellshocked.

Initially Buffy didn’t turn around, because her eggs were hissing at her. Throwing a ‘hey, Will!’ out into the kitchen she kept flicking, letting Dawn take over social management duties.

“Hey, Willow,” Dawn said, doing pretty well. Although it sounded like she’d started eating the bread already (and a glance confirmed that this indeed was true).

It wasn’t enough of a faux pas, however, to legitimate Willow’s strangely unstable response. “Oh, uh, hey, Dawn,” she said. “I, um, I heard cooking and thought you might be… Buffy, hey!” She suddenly changed register to super bright, inviting Buffy to flash a smile at her briefly. “Happy birthday! Uh…” Then the brightness faded. “I was gonna… Dawn, do you wanna, I mean, I dunno…”

“What?” Dawn asked, unassuming and still munching bread.

Buffy was just taking the eggs off the stove when Willow said it. “Buffy, I, uh, I went into your room to see if you wanted…”

_Oh, fuck._

Spinning around, skillet still in hand, Buffy stared at her. How could they have been so _careless_? Apart from the obvious reasons. Although – Willow looked shocked, but mostly embarrassed, processing. Was that good? Bad? Blushing scarlet, Buffy remembered the state she must have found him in.

“I don’t think he was expecting me,” Willow continued, in a pretty clear understatement.

“Oh my god.” Dawn got it far, far, far too quickly. “Did Spike stay _over_?” She sounded scandalised, which made Buffy wince, but then she sounded excited, which was probably worse. “Where is he? Why hasn’t he come down? He should have eggs too!”

“Willow,” Buffy said, then put the frying pan on the table mat, removing all sources of boiling oil from her shaking hands. “I was gonna tell you…”

“Sure!” Willow said brightly, smiling as if she was covering up a big pile of crushed, which just made Buffy feel bad. “I mean, it’s not, it doesn’t…” Her expression sloped into mournful. “Dawn knew about it already?”

“Dawn found _out_ ,” Buffy emphasised, throwing a sister a glare where she was still eating bread. “It wasn’t like a, a selection process or – she’s really nosy!”

“Hey!” Dawn interjected, sounding put out. Buffy winced again.

“Are you really mad?” she continued, turning back to Willow, deciding she was the more dangerous one here. This was reparable, wasn’t it? It didn’t have to be catastrophic. Did it? “I didn’t mean…”

“No, no,” Willow said, apparently trying to be reassuring, putting on a watery smile. It was that smile that reminded Buffy how hard everything was in the real world, and made her pretty much want to get out and go back to not thinking about it. See – stability, that was nice. This was why she hadn’t wanted to tell in the first place. This is why she didn’t want to change things! Then of course Willow continued, “I guess it’s just… I dunno, I mean, I would have liked to know, is all. I knew he was around, but I didn’t know he was – and, I mean, with your party and everything…” She started blushing, and Buffy had an entirely new sense of unease as the babble turned panicky, “It’s just that we thought… We wouldn’t have done it if we’d known! But now he’s gonna feel really awkward and Xander’ll need to tell him…”

“Willow,” Buffy asked suspiciously, cutting her off, “what are you talking about?”

“Your not-a-date! “ she exclaimed. Buffy’s mouth dropped open (some spit may have spat). And then Willow carried on, “We thought it’d be nice, you know, with Xander and Anya and – and you said you wanted Tara to come, so… You were saying you felt like a – he seems really nice!” At Buffy’s stare, Willow started looking around the kitchen, taking in all the cabinets and junk. “There wasn’t gonna be any pressure, but we thought maybe you’d like to meet each other, hence the not-a-date title, and we organised it, and I’ve forgotten his name, exactly, but it’s not really important, I guess, but it would have been nice to have known, you know?”

Buffy did not know. And she was not impressed. And now she had some random guy coming to her house for her birthday? “You got me a blind _date_?” she shouted, before dropping her voice again. “For my _birthday_?” This was so, so so so much more important than the Spike thing. They were clearing this up _now_. “What was this guy gonna do when he got here? What the f…” Oh, wait, no swearing; Dawn was here. Eyebrow raised like everyone apart from her was deeply stupid. “What was I supposed to say when he turned up?” Buffy continued. “Oh, hey, random guy, how d’you like them apples?”

“I don’t know!” Willow replied, throwing up her hands. “You could have just talked – like people do! It’s not like we knew you were keeping a _pet vampire_ tied to the bed.”

Bristling on the word ‘pet’, Buffy snapped back, “That is so _unfair_ , Willow.” Her hands slammed down on the table, sounding her frustration. “And don’t you _dare_ –”

“Wait, you tie him _up_?”

“– talk about him like…”

Buffy trailed off, turning redder as Dawn’s question still echoed. Her sister looked aghast, but actually kind of impressed, which was probably the weirdest and scariest sight that Buffy had ever seen. She actively, positively wished in that moment that the Hellmouth would swallow them whole.

Was it too late to pretend like Willow was joking?

And that was the moment, of course, that Spike chose to arrive. Apparently thinking the answer was ‘yes’.

“Morning, ladies,” he carolled in a voice that expressed nothing other than panic, swinging through the kitchen door. He was dressed, but out of breath, sounding more like he’d run a marathon than climbed out of bed. It didn’t lend him much authenticity. “Buffy,” he began before he caught himself, “I mean, the, er, Slayer and I, we were running an experiment, yeah? Looking at the house for – options. Security, you know, in case you need to keep a demon… Incapacitated, right, in an emergency and – It’s all very proper and; sorry I took you by surprise there, Red, but, er, no harm done? Know it looked a mite dodgy…”

All Buffy could do was stare at him, wondering how on earth he expected that story to convince _anyone_ , let alone Willow – who, you had to face it, was pretty smart – and then _Dawn_ , who knew they were seeing each other.

“Spike.” Willow broke the silence, looking like she believed even less. “You called me _sweetheart_.”

Now Buffy couldn’t help it; she burst out laughing, certain it was that or crying and mostly happy with the option she picked. _Sweetheart_. He never called her that unless he was being sarcastic, so who even knew what he’d said to Willow, but it had almost certainly been violently inappropriate. He definitely seemed embarrassed. “I give you Spike, everybody,” she said, gesturing towards him and throwing on her favourite MC voice. Willow and Dawn both had their eyebrows raised, but she didn’t particularly care. “This master of disguise will tonight be playing the part of my boyfriend.” Didn’t anyone else find that funny? She found it kind of hilarious. “He may also be him as well.”

In the silence, it was pretty hard to say who looked more shocked, Willow or Spike. On both it was a nice sort of shocked, though. Willow, for her part, looked like she’d been expecting a massive load more excuses and obfuscation, while Spike just looked like when she fingered him.

Thankfully there was still Dawn, hovering by the abandoned eggs and testing to see if she could pick them out by hand. “Great,” she smartassed in the end, finding a utensil and flipping the rounds out onto a plate. Buffy wondered if being twenty-one meant she was allowed to admire the resilience of youth, especially as Dawn continued, looking up and nodding to the table, “Can we eat now?”

* * *

The next couple of hours before work actually went OK. Dawn got off to school on time, even gave her a hug and an extra happy birthday before she went, yelling at Spike that he was in no way ever allowed to use her Sleek’n’Shine shampoo-conditioner. It sounded almost like acceptance, but Buffy wasn’t about to push her luck. Nor generally did she plan to make Dawn aware of the fact when Spike was sleeping there; it would be too weird to have him in her room knowing that Dawn knew (sort of) what they were doing. Also Willow.

And thinking of Willow, she’d actually changed her schedule for them, which was nice. After the eggs she jumped straight in the shower, getting ready and out the door much earlier than she usually did, ‘to give them space’. Buffy hoped that didn’t mean that she was too squicked to be in the same house as them, because that would get real old, real fast. But she did leave very quickly, so…

All in all, Buffy’s morning held up. She hadn’t burnt the eggs, and when she dragged Spike into the bathroom there was even enough hot water for the two of them – and on top of _that_ , she discovered that getting a sudsy head massage from someone sucked off to a desperate, Buffy-brought brink was the best way to de-stress ever. Mutual towelling off was also a lot more fun than she remembered; it had to be something about height ratios. Not a bad celebration for the end of her blip. Nor her birthday.

Of course, it had to end. “So, you gonna take that job, then?” Spike asked her eventually, unsurprisingly as she covered up a nice, flattering tank top with Doublemeat polyester. He was sat back on her bed like he owned it, towel just about draped across his hips, and she had half a mind to join him. If only to prove who was boss. She could realise that he was essentially stuck here, so she didn’t overly mind him taking up residence, but she still wasn’t quite sure where the dog-eared hardback had come from, poking out of the pillow behind him. He was nesting. It was weird. “Seems to me that if you took it,” he tempted, hand on his chest, “if you worked nights and that, you wouldn’t have to be leaving right now…”

“You…” She’d told him this, hadn’t she? Laid it out all nice and clear? “Look,” she began, throwing on some earrings, just because it was her birthday. “Don’t think you can tell me what to do, even if the rest of the gang find out about you.” Then she sighed, eyes on her mirror, annoyed that he wasn’t there for her to glare at. At least that was easily solved by turning around. “I told you,” she continued, not especially feeling it but saying it all the same. “There’s balance and stuff. Careful balancing things. Dawn and Willow and bills and – food. I can’t just get a new job, straight like that.”

“Sure you can,” he replied, shrugging. “What’s stopping you?”

“Things!” she repeated, throwing her hands wide. “There’s always things – like, when you said I could move house, Dawn looked into it and there were things. Problems and stuff. And it’ll be the same with this – there’ll be obstacles. And then I’ll just end up back at the DMP on a worse payscale and with Lorraine breathing down my neck.”

Spike seemed to take the information in his stride, scratching his shoulder scabs and frowning comically as he thought it through. “Won’t know unless you ask, though, will you?” he finally said, not sounding like he’d thought much at all. “Not like you need to quit today or anything; what’s the harm in asking what’s involved? It’d make you happier.”

Exasperated, and actually not quite sure if her happiness level was all that bad, considering, Buffy crossed the four steps to the bed and pecked him on the lips, dancing away before he could grab her waist. “It’s sweet that you think about these things, really –” And look at her, being demonstrative. She should get a cookie. “– but I need to go through this stuff at my own speed, make sure everything’s under control.”

“Did all right this morning though, didn’t you?” Spike kept on, not giving this up. Really she could murder him. “You kept Dawn and Willow and… The eggs, you kept them in line. What’s out of balance? Barely even seems precarious to me.”

It was true, to a point. But… “This morning was a fluke,” she told him, picking out her choice for today’s ugly-yet-sturdy shoes, pretty certain that it was. “A birthday fluke, almost certainly to be followed by the birthday curse, which we are not talking about and are hoping won’t strike at the party this evening.” OK; the brown boots. That meant she was ready. Which, oh, meant she was supposed to go.

Crap. She didn’t want to go.

“Nah,” Spike replied, mostly to himself since he didn’t seem to have noticed her distraction, “not a fluke. It was ‘cause you had a proper seeing to, that was. A service,” he continued, not self-deprecating in the least, “that I intend to provide as long as it’s required.”

Usually she would laugh at his silly, soulless ego, but this time it made her heart sink. Why did she have to go to work for nine hours, then come home to a house full of strangers – and there were gonna be strangers, by the sound of it. Why couldn’t she just do this all day?

“Buffy?” came the question, catching on to her silence – and then Spike was off the bed, towel forgotten, holding a palm to her face. Dammit, he made her shiver, clench her stomach like the day before… She reined it in, tried not to let anything show. “I know it’s hard, love,” he continued, talking about something, who knew what, “but you keep at it, don’t you, eh?” He smiled. “Look, I’m only saying think about it. Doing things differently one time, just going for it – that can do a lot, right? Give a lot more back than the effort you put in.”

“I’ll think about it,” she gave in, trying to summon the energy to walk out the door yet again. Quickly, before she changed her mind, she gave in to impulse and threw her arms around his naked waist, reaching up to stroke the welts she’d left that night, hugging him close. Maybe if she took a memory with her, then it wouldn’t seem so long.

Surprised, he clung to her speechlessly, wrapping her arms around her back and huffing his face into her collar. When she pulled away, he looked slightly broken, like she was leaving him at home to go to sea. In that moment, for the first time, it felt exactly like she was.

* * *

Work was hard that day, but it happened, and she got through it, even if she did manage to pour old fryer grease all down her leg in a stain that was never, ever going to come out. It was a good thing her pants had only cost eighteen dollars, she supposed, but that was eighteen dollars that wasn’t going to get spent on food and it felt mostly like a failure.

The whole day had gone by now, of course, and Buffy wondered what she would have done if she hadn’t been at the Palace. Probably she would have had a lot more sex with Spike, but maybe she would have got some cleaning done as well, washed up from the night before.

Idly, Buffy wondered what Detective Lockley would have been doing all day. Cops didn’t really get much sleep, she supposed, so maybe it had been terrible. Probably paperwork. But she would have been in a comfy desk chair while she did that, wouldn’t she? Maybe even one with wheels. The sores on the bottoms of Buffy’s feet really liked the sound of that…

She reached the end of her driveway in barely any time at all, then sighed as she stood outside the house, pouting at the subdued sound of music coming from inside. It was time to get this getting older over with, she supposed, and show off her fantabulous grease-stained life to all her guests. Then she could get changed into something they wouldn’t remember. Whoop-de-do.

“Oi, Slayer,” came a hiss from the shadow of a tree. It was followed by a cigarette butt, thrown through the air at her shoe. It was probably only luck that kept her whole leg from going up in flames.

She stamped it out on the gravel. “Spike?” she asked, peering. He was there, but, wow, that tree cast a darker shadow than she thought it would. It was kind of nice that he was here to bookend her shift, but, still: “Why aren’t you inside?”

For a moment he looked at her, but then he seemed satisfied that she wasn’t trying to get rid of him. “I would be,” he groused at last, “if your friends weren’t such a terrible group of people.”

“What did they do now?” Oh, great, she thought, slumping lower in her bad posture. This was just what she’d been hoping to come home to. “Did they kick you out? They can’t do that, I…”

As he took a breath, it looked like he was going to tell her that that was _exactly_ what they had done – but then he relented, rolling his eyes. “They’re playing musical chairs,” he explained.

“Oh,” she replied, relieved. Then she wrinkled her nose, realising he meant literally. “Oh, god, _really_?”

Spike shook his head in disgust, making her laugh. The music chose that moment to stop, and she could hear for herself all the clattering furniture and laughing. Somebody (Anya?) complaining about mistreatment. Buffy cringed.

“Although Willow, bless her,” Spike commented, gesturing for her to lead the way around the back of the house. That could work actually; she could sneak upstairs and change in secret. “She’s put on quite a spread. You’ll be having bite-size dinners for weeks.” OK, that was better; Buffy hmmed appreciatively, tracking them down the path. “Got some beers in and everything. Mostly bottled up bilgewater, it has to be said, but I’ve topped you up with a few bits. Oh,” he continued, filling the silence, “and your detective showed up.”

They were on the back porch now, where Buffy had to pause, turning around. “Huh?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Spike replied, amused. “She goes by ‘Kate’ apparently. Willow invited her in, a bit tipsy on the old bilgewater. We’re in for a right old time of it if all your friends are such lightweights…”

“Huh?” Buffy repeated, still not following.

Spike shrugged, like it was normal for the Scoobies to include new people. “She won the first game of musical chairs.”

The backdoor opened at this moment, producing one rosy-cheeked Tara. She was waving a hand in front of her face, clutching a Dixie cup in the other. “Oh, hey, guys,” she said, warm smile spreading as she caught sight of them. “We were wondering when you’d get here. And happy birthday, Buffy!”

“Thanks, Tara,” Buffy replied, smiling back, distracting herself from her confusion. Although now she had no idea what to say; did Tara know about everything? She looked like she was cool with whatever, but then Tara was a pretty cool person. And Buffy didn’t want to put her foot in it and start at the end if she was meant to be starting at the beginning – which was proverbially a very good place to start, even if she had no idea where it was.

Spike looked like he was going to follow her lead. The man was useless to her.

“So,” Tara broke the quiet, flush fading. “Willow told me you came out?”

Now Buffy was frowning again, glancing back to the path they’d just walked. “Uh, no,” she explained, glad at least that this was a question she could answer. “We were just going in, actually. I need to change my pants.” Suddenly Tara’s reassuring smile became wide-eyed and scandalised, so Buffy amended quickly, holding the material up to the light. “Grease!” Oh, god, what did Tara think it was? “It’s grease!” She wasn’t _that_ much of a… “I got a grease stain at work!”

Unhelpfully, Spike started snickering, even after her glare. He was probably thinking about all her other clothes that had been reduced to a less than respectable condition. Bastard. “At least that clears up something, pet,” he managed to comment, flicking his eyes to Tara.

Oh yeah, Buffy realised, meeting the other woman’s blush. Clearly the secret was out, which was probably good – and she got what Tara had meant by ‘came out’ now – but going by her complete failure to talk about it, maybe it was best to get on with the party and not bring it up again. “I’m, uh, gonna go inside,” she said, heading towards the door, fingers drifting to Spike’s on the way.

As she walked past Tara, though, the woman at least got through her embarrassment enough to put her hand on Buffy’s shoulder. “Whatever the others say,” she whispered, in a way that wasn’t intended for Spike’s ears, but which he almost certainly heard anyway, “I’m really happy for you.”

Brought up short, Buffy found herself relaxing, a smile pulled to her face. “Thanks,” she whispered, definitely grateful. She hoped both of them would hear the, _Me too, actually_. She’d only just realised it.

* * *

It all went wrong about midnight.

Or, actually, they said it was midnight later, but Buffy had a feeling it was more like eleven. Dawn was still up, granted reprieve from the evil constraints of teenage bedtime for one night only, and she hadn’t yet dropped off to sleep of her own accord. Since that usually happened around eleven-thirty, there was much to be suspicious about.

They’d done cake, which had in fact been secretly produced in the kitchen of Dawn, to a very high level of chocolate. Everyone had gushed gratefully, and despite Spike’s whisper in her ear about the correct use for fudge sauce, he’d been allowed to sit and stand and slouch in her vicinity without comment. Frowns, but no comment. Conversation had flowed, even, and everyone had quickly filled themselves too full for party games. This was good, in Buffy’s book, even if it did mean Monopoly.

At about eleven, or eleven-thirty, however, Anya threw down her cards (including the Broadwalk she’d bought off Dawn for the hefty sum turned a steal now) and declared, “OK; I don’t care if everyone else has forgotten. I wanna do presents! Ours is excellent.”

Considering that the usual way Monopoly ended was Anya bullying everyone into playing right through to her inevitable victory, this was a demand they were happy to meet. After all, Buffy actually _had_ forgotten about presents, which was embarrassing enough in itself. And so they packed everything away, called in Tara, Spike and Kate from where they’d given up in the kitchen, then gathered for the ritual gift-giving. Buffy knelt where she was in the centre of the room, while everyone else sat, stood or lurked around the coffee table. Kate and Tara seemed to be friends now; they were standing together, shared a joke.

Presents, to be fair, started great with Xander’s revelation of his (and Anya’s) weapons chest. Big, chunky, solid, beautiful; it was enough to make Buffy coo instinctively, forgiving him entirely for the not-a-date (Randall?) who’d long gone home. She met Xander’s grin with a thousand feelings of friendship. “Oh, this is so amazing, Xand; thank you.”

“No problem,” he replied, leaving it by her side as he went back to his place on the couch, the beaming Anya who took his hand. He continued as Buffy opened up the elegantly-shaped catch, taking in all the compartments and holders inside, “I figured you needed something you could keep in here for easy access, without gathering odd looks from rogue callers.”

“I picked out the pattern for the carving,” Anya said, leaning forward to indicate the design on the top.

It was really, really nice, like something her mom would have picked out for blankets in the guest room. Not that Buffy knew much about interior decorating, but she figured it looked classic. And the workmanship was impeccable. “I’m gonna treasure it, guys, seriously,” she told them, running a hand over the lid. Everyone else looked just as impressed as she was, though Kate was raising eyebrows over her beer. Even Spike, lurking by the sofa, nodded at her as if to say, _Don’t look half bad, that._

It was Tara’s present next, which was less flashy, but also really lovely as a box opened up to reveal a selection of four hand-labelled bottles, all blown from cobalt blue glass with their necks tied off in gold ribbon. “They’re blessed bath oils,” she explained as Buffy ran her fingers over them, looking a little pink from speaking up. “Aromatherapy with an extra – kick, I guess? I, uh, thought you might like baths, with all the fighting you do.”

Given all the muscle aches she got? It was fair to say Buffy was a bather. “Thanks, Tara,” she said, smiling, then reading over the labels in turn. It was kind of like what she’d seen in shops, but usually in the fancy concessions she couldn’t afford: _Health – Peppermint_ , the first one said, in Tara’s precise capitals. It was followed by _Power – Clove_ and _Peace – Chamomile_ , and she was already excited about using them, if only to see what Tara meant by ‘power’. On the last one, however, she paused. It stared at her quite plainly, in bold letters like the others: _Sex – Star Anise_.

Buffy couldn’t help but blush, before glancing up to see that Tara was giving her a sneaky, secret grin. It just made her cheeks burn harder. “They look great!” Buffy said, trying not to squeak as she hastily put the lid back on the box.

No one else seemed to have caught on, which was good. Sexy bath things stopped being quite so harmless when everyone knew who you’d be using them with. Or maybe that was just her?

Willow, however, seemed to have got the same idea about the perfect present for Buffy, even if she’d gone with the technology route. Her present was a back massager. A battery-operated, portable vibrating _thing_ , and she was pointing out the controls in a way that made Buffy certain it was too complicated for anyone to use it properly. And yet Willow kept on explaining, saying, “I thought you could use it on patrol. Any time you get a little achey, then – blam! Instant gratification.”

If Buffy hadn’t already been thinking it, then maybe, just maybe, she wouldn’t have thought about how unnecessary an extra device was for that. About how she’d had instant gratification plenty. Against trees. And tombstones. And – As it was, she blushed an even deeper pink than she was already, flashing her eyes to Spike’s innuendo face in plain view of every one of her friends, to made Xander harrumph. Loudly. The tension in the room increased exponentially.

Quickly Buffy cut in, “That sounds amazing! Thanks, Will.” Colour was rising high on Willow’s cheeks as she realised what she’d said, and she apparently didn’t trust herself to speak, because she simply nodded, mouth tightly closed.

“And here’s mine,” Dawn said at last, doing her bit to ease the tension but starting to sound cranky with tiredness. She passed the slim, small box Buffy’s way and she unwrapped the paper, preparing herself to get excited over more chocolate, or whatever it was. It wasn’t like Dawn had money to burn on a gift, after all, only…

Buffy gasped, brought to a halt. Inside the box, which was unmarked, there was a gorgeous leather collar, at rest like a small black snake. It actually threw all thoughts of sex completely out of Buffy’s mind, whether that was stupid or not; she was too caught up in the shiny. The thin and supple skin of the necklace was held between clasps, a silver chain that would hang from the back of it the only adornment apart from the leather itself. It was beautiful. It looked expensive. “Oh my gosh,” Buffy began.

Only to have Dawn anticipate what she _wasn’t_ going to say. “Obviously,” she defended herself, sardonic, “I got this before I knew about the bondage.”

Silence fell. Spike guffawed. There was the sound of beer being snorted through nostrils. “OK, _what?_ ” Xander spluttered from the couch, sounding scandalised. His eyes flared, first to Buffy’s (she glanced away), then to Spike, then to Dawn. “What the hell?”

No one had much of an answer, until: “You know bondage, sweetie,” Anya soothed from Xander’s side, rubbing his knee and frowning. “Like when we –”

“I know what it _is_ , Ahn,” Xander snapped, getting louder. Buffy flinched. “What I want to know is how _Dawn_ knows,” he continued, turning glares at Buffy, then Spike in turn as if he was trying to choose to pick a fight with. “I want to know what Spike’s doing in this house, hanging out and obviously corrupting –”

“Oh, can it, Harris,” Spike sneered, dragging all the heat towards him. Now it started, it was definitely starting. “You know full well I take good care of Dawn –“

“Yeah, he does!” came the care-ee’s agreement, quickening the pace of everyone’s words.

“– and you have jackshit say in mine and the Slayer’s private business, so –”

“When did you and Buffy get ‘private business’, all of a sudden?” Xander retaliated before Spike had even finished, exclamation thunderous. “We’ve been by her side through thick and thin, so don’t think just because –”

Spike did the same. “Yeah, right, you – ”

“Xander’s right, Spike!” Then Willow. “You can’t just expect that we’ll –”

“Oh, come _off_ of it!” Anya.

“You can fuck off and all, Red, with your –”

“How about we all…”

“No, Tara, we need –”

Buffy’s eyes were closed by this point, but the voices, the voices carried on. Somehow she should have seen this coming, she knew, realised that at some point in the evening it was going to go down this way – and yet she was fairly sure she’d been hoping it wouldn’t, like things might continue the way they had this morning, where Willow was shocked, but not enough to start a catastrophe. It was only Xander really, she knew, who had a problem, but his voice could fill a room, and Spike, when you set him off, he just sounded so _mean_ , dirty and arrogant and brittle and subversive, all the things that he wasn’t quite, actually, when you fully found him out.

She wasn’t ready for this, Buffy realised. She hadn’t prepared herself at all.

And so she got out. Opening her eyes to Dawn’s wavering, apologetic frown, Buffy climbed to her feet and turned around, walked away from the screaming match and into the kitchen. With one easy jerk she hauled open the fridge, pulled out one of Spike’s cold beers and held it against the tense pressure of her forehead. Then she slammed the door and kept going, slipping outside into the garden and the silence. Quiet, cool and peace.

Slumping, she stood out of the direct light, feet planted firmly on the grass as she looked up to the sky. Light pollution or clouds were probably what was killing most of the stars, but the moon was there, a grey half-circle, dim and matte. Something to stare at. At last.

The argument inside would end eventually, she knew, but she found herself wishing she could leap forward in time, jump to the new moon, maybe, when Xander’s wedding would hit the agenda with a hell of a lot more force than her life. Would it be so hard? Even just a night – she would take skipping a night. Was it so wrong to want that?

It wasn’t like it hadn’t been possible before. Until recently she’d been able to throw herself into uniform and let six hours pass between the grill and the register, not even noticing. She’d often found herself in tears when she came out the other side, but she’d been able to sit and stare and think for minutes and hours at a time, let life happen around her while she waited for hers to stop. Maybe it hadn’t been healthy, but it had been easier than _this_ , this awareness of every sentence she couldn’t hear being shouted and every second she was failing to integrate Spike. It wasn’t that she didn’t want it to happen, she just knew it was gonna take _time_. And that time was probably meant to be now.

Bringing the beer down from her forehead, Buffy decided that she might as well drink it, even if she hadn’t brought an opener outside. What was super strength for if not to push against a beer cap, feel the teeth dig in and keep on pushing?

“That can’t be good for your thumb,” Kate’s voice came from behind her shoulder, just as the cap popped off.

Buffy spun around, sloshing beer froth across her shoes, surprise lurching through her chest.

“Sorry,” Kate said, smiling awkwardly from the back porch. She had a bottle in her hand as well, but that didn’t seem to have any cap difficulties. “Family feuding,” she explained. “Not really my thing. I thought you might like some company.”

“People say that,” Buffy said; her words came out morose. “It usually just means that they want some themselves.”

“Actually, you’d be surprised,” Kate shot back, tilting her bottle to a jaunty angle before she took a sip. She didn’t sound like she was disagreeing, only that Buffy might be interested in a correction. “In my experience, it’s usually some misguided idea that they might help.”

At that, Buffy found the side of her mouth quirking up. “Is that why _you’re_ here, then?” Bringing her own bottle up, she drank something like a toast. Of course it was Spike’s beer, so it tasted dark and bitter, strong like sandpaper. A little gross. But, as she remembered, it got better when you were half a bottle down.

“No,” Kate said, responding slowly to her question. “I actually _did_ want the company.” With that Kate came down the steps, joining Buffy on the grass, where she wasn’t so unwelcome, in the end. “I’m really not a fan of yelling; which is funny, with my job.” She smiled, and, at that point, Buffy was smiling with her. “Although, also, I came to the house this evening to try and talk to you, so this seemed like a good moment to get you alone – even if it’s only to thank you.” She nodded her head back towards inside. “This has been the most social evening I’ve had since I left LA.”

Surprised, Buffy caught on to that last point. “What, really?” she asked. Kate’s face was serious. Apparently she really was calling her exclusive-spin-on-a-dime-claustrophobic party social. “I guess this _is_ a small town, huh?”

“Yeah,” Kate replied, tossing hair out of her eyes. “That, and the attempted suicide put a minor downer on things.” The confession came with a shrug.

All the same, it killed Buffy’s urge to be flip. Not commenting immediately, she squinted, almost surprised – but then, yeah, she could see it. Not that she was an authority on suicide, obviously, but she figured she was almost an expert on death these days. “I know how that goes,” she finally responded, taking care.

“I almost thought you might,” Kate said. She looked like she wanted to say more, but distracted herself, commenting instead, “Those oils, by the way, that – Tara gave you? If they’re anything like the candles she does for the Magic Box, they’re really good.”

Buffy blinked, before remembering the day before. “Oh, really?” Apparently she _had_ just been interested in candles. “Cool.” Kate shrugged, pressing her lips together in something like a smile, which made Buffy figure she could possibly ask a question. “So, um…” she began. “How long ago was it, for you?”

“Oh.” Pausing, Kate seemed to gather up her thoughts. “Well, I guess it’s been about a year now,” she said. “There’s still a few weeks before the actual anniversary, but… Yeah.”

“Huh,” Buffy replied. Only a year, she thought. And yet the detective looked so together, like everything was fully back on track – even if it was only in Sunnydale. Who knew _that_ was possible? Maybe she could let her in on the secret. “Did anyone in there tell you how I managed to manage mine? The dying, I mean.”

That comment, which Buffy thought it was only fair to offer, had Kate raise her eyebrows. She took another sip of beer before she replied, “It didn’t come up, I’ve gotta say.” She sounded intrigued. “How exactly does that work?”

Shrugging, Buffy explained, “Big tower, apocalypse, the retiring redhead inside and a whole load of dark magic. At least that’s the way I understand it.” She finished with another swig of beer. “Four months in the ground, if you can believe it.”

“I guess I’m gonna have to,” Kate replied, taking it more in her stride than Buffy would have expected. Even if she took a moment to mouth, _four months?_ and shake her head, like she wasn’t sure she’d heard. “Anyway, look,” she continued, shrugging her shoulders better into her jacket (the same one as from last night), “I was only gonna say two things.” It was nice to move from talking suicide straight back into general conversation, Buffy realised, almost like it was an acceptable experience to have. Maybe she liked this woman. “Well.” Kate paused; Buffy concentrated again. “Only one thing, really, when I came, but then this other part leapt out at me – because, I mean, I hope you didn’t refuse my job offer because your boyfriend’s a vampire, did you?” She looked at Buffy with her eyes open and guileless, trying to be clear, it seemed. “Because, for me, let me tell you, that’s not an issue. It doesn’t bother me at all. Not that I’m saying I don’t _have_ issues, but they’re all with other things. And this – other guy.”

“That’s… Good to know,” Buffy told her, looking at her slightly askance in the hope her words might make more sense. Or at least sound less like she was talking about Angel. “But no,” she shook herself from that egocentric idea, “it wasn’t that.” She still – it was still a control thing. Maybe in a few weeks she’d feel like she could take it, but not now, even if Kate _was_ fine with Spike being Spike. “I’m sorry; the idea’s just too much at the moment.”

“No problem.” Kate looked relieved as she continued, “I understand – and, well, the offer still stands. Consider it permanently open.” She looked down, throwing the idea out there with an abandon Buffy was grateful for, and then carried on. “Otherwise, I wanted to thank you for your lead earlier, on Warren Mears?”

Still grimacing over the taste of her drink, Buffy could easily be distracted by that, if not from the grimace. “Oh?” she asked, ears perking up.

“Yeah,” Kate said, sounding perplexed. “We went to his home this morning, did what turned out to be a raid – stolen artefacts, ill-gotten goods, hard cash in bank rolls.” She told it like a story she wanted to share, her surprise coming out in every word. “That place was an Aladdin’s cave; I’m not sure I’ve seen a drug cartel with more bling.” The problem was for Buffy that she always heard weird things. “We caught him and his accomplice playing on an _Xbox_.”

Bottle to her lip, Buffy paused at that moment, suddenly not sure what she was hearing. “Wait,” she said. “You arrested him? Arrested _Warren_?” That – couldn’t be possible. It just wasn’t.

“Yeah,” Kate replied, shrugging. Buffy supposed she arrested lots of people. But then she continued, “Blond guy, right? Looks like an extra from a Bill and Ted movie? Short guy sidekick?”

 _No._ “No…” Buffy told her, stomach sinking, pretty much bottoming out. “That’s not Warren.” Crap; maybe she _should_ have been there, because that wasn’t Warren at all. “That’s just –”

It was this point when she heard rustling in her undergrowth. “Bitch!” came the rather frantic-sounding shout. He had timing; really, you had to give him that. You really did.

“ _That’s_ Warren,” Buffy said, the words coming automatically as she turned to look his way. She should have seen this coming, she thought; known it at least. There should have been some sort of warning, but there was nothing, just a guy in a hoodie trespassing on her property, coming up from the other end of the garden.

“You thought you could do that to me!” He looked terrible, because of the low light or what Buffy couldn’t be sure, but his face was haggard, eyes wide and strained. It was like his whole world had come crashing down around his ears. Buffy knew how that felt, but she was frozen without sympathy. Still not sure what was happening. “Thought you could take everything away! Well –” Oh, shit, what was that in his hand? This was why she stuck to demons; this was –“Think again!”

After that? She was just being shot. Which, as birthday disasters went, kind of blew.

Buffy would never be quite sure about the sequence of events, not as they happened and not afterwards, but she was fairly sure Kate pulled her down as the shot fired, shouting out a warning or something like it. It made her wrist wrench through closed fingers when the impact hit, so that made sense that there were bruises, later. But there was more shouting as well, Kate calling out like a cop on TV, backed up by the metal clicks of her own gun falling into hand. There was a shot and then another, and then another, and a hand pressed high on her chest – right where the pain was, which wasn’t very nice – and talking, muttering of fragments, some of which sounded like her name.

There were a lot more footsteps and voices than people outside, also, which was strange. She could hear them, but looking up at the blank, black sky she couldn’t see them. At some point they faded away like the moon.

* * *

_The ceiling above her was white. She was hooked up to something, fresh out of surgery it felt like, but Dawn was holding her hand. Something black and blocky, male-shaped was pacing at the end of her bed, hand rising and falling like it lacked a cigarette. On her left, where the room stretched, there was a cluster of people: one chair between them, two people sitting on it; one hovering by the wall, one sitting on her bed._

_Everyone looked very contrite. “Wow…” Buffy murmured, blinking into wakefulness. A collective sigh ran about the room, staggered as people met her eyes. She could almost hear the sound of skin cracking smiles. “There’s so many people here…”_

_“See, Buff,” Xander told her gently as Dawn squeezed her hand, continuing with his head tucked onto Anya’s shoulder, “that’s ‘cause a lot of people care.” And that was Willow, wasn’t it, patting her knee in reassurance? Looking to Tara for her own?_

_“Man’s right, Slayer,” now Spike said gruffly, resting his hands on the steel bed rail, slipping further into focus. She smiled at him for being agreeable; he stood stock still at the end of her feet, facing her so their eyes met on a perfectly straight trajectory. “Buffy –” suddenly he addressed her, hands clenching, voice more like they were alone. It made her heart stir._

_But Spike was interrupted by the doctor, who came in through the door on his left. She strode in, flanked by a nurse, who buzzed around, checking things. “Miss Summers,” she began, “I’m glad to see…”_

_After that the doctor’s voice blurred quickly, sentences tending to dip and slide into a drone. Nonetheless, Buffy managed to pick up certain pieces of information, like the fact she’d been shot, which was nice to know, and that her clavicle had made a good first line of defence. That was good, even if her left arm was going to be screwy for a while. Also, however, she apparently would have to stay in some days for observation. At that Buffy almost groaned. This was why she hated hospitals._

_In her hand, however, Dawn’s palm was sweating, so Buffy resisted the impulse to complain. She squeezed her fingers more firmly, tried to say without words that things would be OK – threw a smile at Dawn’s shadowed young face. It wasn’t that Buffy knew how she was meant to make it happen, but some part of her had clung to life, hadn’t it? She’d come back from the blackout when she could have just died; that meant things had to be OK._

 

Man, she was tired.

 

_She felt it when he left. It was like all the air went dead around her, which was more than ironic, but she was too busy feeling it to care. “Spike…?”_

_Everyone was in the wrong place. All on her left now, Dawn was sat on the floor beside a conspicuously empty space, clutching a can of Dr. Pepper to her mouth while Xander eased himself down to her other side. Anya was pulling a selection of sandwiches, chocolate and juice boxes from a blue plastic bag, arranging them hesitantly on the now-vacated chair. Willow and Tara were somewhere else._

_None of them were looking at her, so Buffy thought that maybe they hadn’t heard. “Where did Spike go?” she asked, a little stronger – before adding, just in case, “And the others.”_

_“Xander made him go get blood,” Anya informed her brightly, ignoring the extraneous question._

_Looking mortified, Xander stared at her, before turning to Buffy and gulping the expression back. “Yeah, um…” He paused, not talking for a long time. “He’ll be back soon,” he finally added, with a quick, forced smile._

_“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.” Swirling feelings of worry twisted in Buffy’s stomach and it seemed necessary to say. “I should have told you before; we could have…”_

_“It’s fine,” Xander replied, panicked hand waving in front of his body. From what Buffy could make out of his face, it looked like he was going to leave it there, but Anya was frowning and Dawn poked his arm. Buffy held her breath as he continued, “I mean…” Then he sighed. “It’s really fine.”_

_She felt the air rush into her; he sounded pretty much sincere. “Are you sure?”_

_“Yeah, why not?” he said resignedly. “We should have seen it coming, I guess.” Glancing at Dawn, he finally allowed, “It’s not like you haven’t been tying each other up for years – you big flirts.”_

_“Oh,” was all Buffy could say. Was that what that was?_

_“Everything’s OK,” Dawn told her gently, apparently noticing as Buffy’s vision struggled to keep clear. “Just get some rest.”_

_It was Dawn who should be doing that, Buffy thought; she had school. Buffy would rest when she was…_

 

She woke up fully by mid-morning, so the clock on the wall told her, propped up on the tilty bed and easily taking in the bright and beeping room. The night had escaped her after all, it seemed, if not quite in the way that she’d hoped. It felt, actually, really weird.

Of course, this was mostly because it had still found the others. Xander and Anya looked exhausted, so Buffy told them to go spread the news she was OK, just get some sleep or whatever, and they left the room – easily biddable after the nurses had come and gone. Dawn was asleep on a two-chair-made-bed, breathing heavily through her frown, so it was easy to leave her to the light shining in through the blinds.

Spike was as awake as her, but – he was ever so slightly punch-drunk; wide-eyed and over stimulated when she smiled at him. She tried to invite him up the bed, but he would only have it halfway, sitting by her knees and clutching his own to his chest, ankles crossed. Not touching her.

Exasperated, she let it go. “So, OK,” she said, stretching out for the bowl of goop she’d been given to eat. She’d had them put the tray by her side, but she could reach it. “Fill me in.”

“Well,” Spike began, still watching her owlishly, “Warren’s dead.” Oh. Buffy paused, spoon in her mouth. “Our cop did her job, shot him down when he wasn’t gonna stop, had better aim than he did.”

“I… She shot him?” Frowning, she didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t really sure how killing Warren worked, and didn’t feel like she was comfortable with it. Obviously she knew this was what cops did; she’d seen it on TV a hundred times, and if there was anyone she would suspect of not freezing when a cop told him to, it was Warren. But, all the same; how could it be that – “She really shot him?”

Spike shrugged, completely unconcerned. “She said she’d drop by when she could. Once the ambulance came she had to head back to the station, get all the paperwork filed.”

“Oh.” That was probably it, wasn’t it? In her world, Buffy knew, she made it up as she went along, but Kate had all her rules to follow, regulations and parameters. Maybe that made it easier. Or maybe it made it more difficult. “I don’t understand humans,” Buffy decided at last, frustrated with having to think. She dumped her spoon in the goop bowl then reached out again towards Spike. It was a gesture she hoped he’d take up this time.

At first he frowned, glancing towards her dressing, but relented as she pouted, gingerly lying himself on his side and resting his head just above her hip. Ceasing to think with the weight of him, she let her fingers dig through his hair, poked at the thoughts she knew that he was hiding.

Eventually Spike did what he was meant to: he picked up her train of thought and resolved it. “No one understands humans, love,” he said, smoothing the covers over her stomach. “Not even them.” With a shift his head, he looked up, daft smile on his face. It probably matched hers. “You’re bloody soft, fragile creatures, who somehow got by with a bit of flint and the odd urge to negotiate. No one understands you.” He finished, nuzzling his head back down, appreciative of softness, “I wouldn’t fret on it.”

Maybe that was OK, then, she thought, returning to her head-stroking. They were soothing, Spike’s pronouncements, the way he saw the world so absolutely. Even if she had to focus on the details, he would never not see things in big, convenient lumps. Although – “I don’t think I’m fragile,” she said. Sure, she couldn’t move her left arm right at the moment and her whole body was suffused with a light, fluffy feeling, but that didn’t mean anything. “I just got shot.”

“Suppose that’s all right, then,” Spike replied, a little nonsensically. She rolled her eyes. It wasn’t uncomfortable in the least, but he was slumping a more heavily into her side now, almost certainly falling asleep. “Shouldn’t feel bad, though,” he added, words starting to slur, “not about needing your rest.”

“Nah,” she agreed as he snuffled, drifting off, drifting still. “I won’t.”

He was soon dead in her arms again, but that was all right. She was OK. She was alive – and healing, if her itching skin had anything to say about it. For the moment she was awake, and it felt, it almost felt like she was fine with that. Like she was fine with the seconds ticking by.

When Spike woke up, she could tell him exactly what time it was.


End file.
